Convictions for homosexuality: Senate adopts text recognizing French “responsibility”

Not compensation, but recognition. The Senate passed a bill on Wednesday aimed at acknowledging the French state’s “responsibility” for convicting people for homosexuality between 1945 and 1982 based on old discriminatory laws. This text of the socialist faction was unanimously adopted by the upper house. The right-wing and centrist Senate majority, however, rejected provisions aimed at providing financial “compensation” to people convicted of homosexuality during this period.

The text voted on in the Senate states that “the French Republic acknowledges its responsibility” for the application of laws that constituted “discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation” before 1982. a certain age of consent for homosexual relations, and another increases the suppression of public outrages of modesty committed by two people of the same sex. The wording of the text makes it possible to “recognize” that these provisions “were a source of suffering and trauma for those convicted.”

“You are replacing the law of hate; the law of unity, recognition and memory,” said Justice Minister Eric Dupont-Moretti, “supporting the principle of the proposed law.” Nevertheless, the “compensatory” part of the text was rejected on the initiative of the right and the center, the majority in the Senate, in particular, due to legal difficulties associated with the limitation period.

Even if it is difficult to count the number of victims of these old laws, the Minister of Justice, based on research, estimated that between 1945 and 1982 they affected “more than 10,000 people”, 90% of whom were sentenced to prison. . To succeed in parliament, the text must now be placed on the agenda of the National Assembly with a view to its final adoption.