2023-11-23 03:11:34
No compensation, but recognition. The Senate adopted on Wednesday a bill aimed at recognizing the “responsibility” of the French state in the convictions of people for homosexuality between 1945 and 1982 on the basis of old discriminatory laws. This text from the socialist group was unanimously adopted by the upper house. The right and center senatorial majority nevertheless rejected the provisions aimed at providing financial “reparation” to people convicted of homosexuality during this period.
The text voted on in the Senate establishes that “the French Republic recognizes its responsibility” in the application of laws which constituted “discrimination based on sexual orientation” until 1982. Two articles of the penal code introduced under the Vichy regime are targeted, one establishing a specific age of consent for homosexual relations and the other increasing the repression of public outrage of modesty committed by two people of the same sex. The wording of the text makes it possible to “recognize” that these provisions “were sources of suffering and trauma for the convicted persons”.
“You substitute a law of hatred; a law of unity, recognition and memory”, launched Minister of Justice Éric Dupond-Moretti, “favorable to the principle of this proposed law”. The “compensation” part of the text was nevertheless rejected at the initiative of the right and the center, a majority in the Senate, due in particular to legal difficulties relating to prescription.
Even if it is difficult to quantify the victims of these old laws, the Minister of Justice estimated, on the basis of research, that “more than 10,000 people” were affected between 1945 and 1982, with a sentence of prison for 90% of them. To prosper in Parliament, the text must now be included on the agenda of the National Assembly, with a view to final adoption.
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