“Inflicting sentences on homosexuals was revolting”: in 1982, Robert Badinter’s plea for the gay cause
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“Five, four, three, two, one…” Sunday, May 10, 1981, 8 p.m. The “gay tea dance” of the Palace has been launched for several hours when the face of the new president, the socialist François Mitterrand, appears on the screen set up by Fabrice Emaer. The boss of the famous Parisian nightclub announces the news himself to the thousand regulars who crowd into the room. Screams of joy on the dancefloor. Roses fly from the balcony. Emaer improvises Life in pink in the version of Grace Jones. The party will last until morning.
Has the prince of Parisian gay nights felt the tide turn? For the past few weeks, he has displayed a momentum for the left that we did not know about him until then and that his most prominent clients or friends, such as the fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent or the businessman Pierre Bergé, do not share. At the Palace, most of the “rich and beautiful people” are worried about the promises of nationalization or the arrival of communist ministers, who are frowned upon by the American market. They fear above all future tax increases. Photographer Helmut Newton was the first to go into exile in Monaco, soon to be followed by Karl Lagerfeld.
Not everyone has the same interests in the homosexual community. The small people of the Palace spun, him, place of the Bastille, where one celebrates Mitterrand. The Emergency Committee against homosexual repression (Cuarh), which for two years has brought together almost all militant movements and lobbied to put “the gay question” on the presidential agenda, unfurled its banner: “ Gays have chosen freedom. Activists, however, hesitate to give in to euphoria and believe in miracles. The magazine team Gay Foot looking for the title of his next cover: it will be “Seven years of happiness? » With a question mark, and a lot of caution.
“Re-flying”
Voting for the socialist candidate was neither immediate nor obvious. Should a pink triangle be placed in the ballot box, as the writer Yves Navarre had suggested a few months earlier? Support Coluche? Or choose the ecologist Brice Lalonde?
“ Many of the gay activists came from leftism, explains historian Antoine Idier. Trusting the institutional left was not self-evident, especially since until now the socialists had shown little interest in homosexual issues. Local elected officials had even shown themselves hostile, in the 1970s, to certain militant groups. » The abolition of the “offense of homosexuality” does not appear in the 110 proposals of the candidate Mitterrand. But it only took a few sentences on his part, between the two rounds, for all that to be forgotten.
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