TRUE OR FALSE. Did the new Prime Minister, Michel Barnier, vote against the decriminalization of homosexuality in 1981?

Then a young right-wing MP, the head of government did indeed oppose the bill adopted 43 years ago. Inter-LGBT now says it fears a government that is “hostile” to its cause.

Barely appointed, already criticized. The new Prime Minister, Michel Barnier, was accused by several anti-homophobia associations on Thursday, September 5, of having voted against the decriminalization of homosexuality in 1981. Before seeing his political career take off (minister of Jacques Chirac and Nicolas Sarkozy, European Commissioner, chief Brexit negotiator, etc.), the right-wing elected official was then 30 years old and was serving his first term as RPR MP for Savoie.

As soon as Michel Barnier’s appointment was announced, Inter-LGBT said, on X, “cdismayed by the appointment of Michel Barnier as Prime Minister, who had opposed the decriminalization of thehomosexuality in 1981. A clearer sign than ever that the government will be hostile to our rights and existence!”

The Association of Homosexual Parental Families denounced, for the same reasons, on X, “a more than questionable choice”. PSeveral deputies from the New Popular Front, such as Louis Boyard (LFI) and Léa Balage El Mariky (Ecologist), have also criticised this choice in light of Michel Barnier’s previous vote.

What really happened? Let’s rewind 43 years. On December 20, 1981, the National Assembly examined the bill tabled by Raymond Forni and several other socialist deputies, including the famous lawyer Gisèle Halimi. The text aims to repeal the second paragraph of Article 331 of the Penal Code, which then punishes any “indecent or unnatural act with an individual of the same sex”, including when the age of sexual consent, which is 15 years, is exceeded.

“Homosexuality in itself was not reprehensible” in 1981, underlines Thierry Pastorello, author of the work Sodom in Paris, in an article by Release published in 2018. Ce vote corresponds to “the end of this discrimination in the age of ‘sexual majority’ between relationships between people of the opposite sex (15 years) and of the same sex (21 years until 1974, 18 years since 1974)”details in this same article Régis Revenin, researcher in the history of gender and homosexuality at the University of Paris-7. Rather than decriminalizing homosexuality in the strict sense, it is therefore a question “to set the age of ‘sexual majority’ at the same level for everyone”. In fact, this bill entails the complete decriminalization of homosexual relations.

At the podium, the Minister of Justice, Robert Badinter, denounces “an exceptional charge which nothing, not even historical tradition, justifies maintaining.” “Such a repressive provision is contrary to two fundamental principles of law: the principle of non-discrimination and that of respect for the privacy of private life”, continues the minister, who has since disappeared.

The bill was adopted by 327 votes to 155. Michel Barnier was one of the deputies who opposed it, as were Jacques Chirac, François Fillon and Jacques Chaban-Delmas, according to the report of the vote, available on the National Assembly archives website. Contacted by franceinfo on Thursday, the entourage of the new Prime Minister did not respond at this stage.

Michel Barnier is not the first to see old votes resurface. In 2022, Catherine Vautrin’s vote against same-sex marriage was brandished, when she was given the running for Matignon. This did not prevent the former president of Greater Reims from being appointed Minister of Labor, Health and Solidarity, two years later, notes a Renaissance executive.