Will France Apologize to Gay Men Hurt by Homophobic Laws?

French lawmakers were set to consider a bill that would officially apologize for - and compensate victims for - harsh laws that persecuted gays for four decades, from 1942-1982, severely impacting the lives of an estimated 10,000 people and forcing untold numbers of others deep into the closet for fear of being subjected to similar legal and social repercussions if they were found out.

The BBC explains that the first law for which the measure would apologize was first enacted during the country's so-called Vichy Period, during which the government formed an official collaboration with the invading Nazis. That law established a much different age of consent for same-sex relations than existed for sexual relations between people of mixed genders. Straights could legally have sex starting at age 13; for gay, however, the age went up drastically, to 21 years of age.

Similar to how German officials after World War II did not repeal Nazi-enforced laws criminalizing gays - Paragraph 175, in Germany's case - France left the inequitable law on the books even once the Nazis had been defeated, the BBC noted.

Another law, passed in 1960, "criminalized homosexuality as a 'social scourge,' alongside alcoholism, drug use and prostitution," The BBC relayed. "Judges were given wide leeway to target homosexuals under existing laws criminalizing public indecency," the article added.

Political science expert Associate Professor Antoine Idier told the BBC that fines and jail time were imposed on gay men prosecuted under the laws; Idier added that the social and familial fallout added to the crushing weight of the punitive measures, as men who had been convicted faced "social ostracism" and suffered the economic consequences of job loss. Men trying to put their lives back together sometimes had to move to other cities, and "we even see cases of suicide" by those the laws had targeted.

The proposed measure would provide a monetary compensation to those the laws had impacted, the article said, paying out €10,000 (just under $11,000) to still-living victims of such homophobic legal persecution.

Such laws have been passed in other countries. "The UK's 'Turing Law,' which received royal assent in 2017, pardoned gay men convicted under some discriminatory legislation," the BBC noted. Germany, also, made such an apology to the victims of Paragraph 175 in 2017.

Britain also tendered a mea culpa in 2009, when the conservative Prime Minister at the time, David Cameron, a conservative, officially issued an apology for the notoriously homophobic Section 28, perhaps best remembered now as a Florida-style "Don't Say Gay" law criminalizing "the teaching in any maintained school of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship". The law also forced school teachers and staff into the closet.

Régis Schlagdenhauffen, an academic "who has researched the persecution of gay people in France," told the BBC that "France is later than other countries on this issue."

Added the assistant professor, who is associated with the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences (EHESS): "But it should officially recognize the injustice while some victims are still alive."

If the French senate passes the bill, it will need approval from the National Assembly, the BBC noted - an outcome that is far from assured.