Since French President Emmanuel Macron lost the European elections to the far-right National Rally on June 9 and announced snap parliamentary elections, attacks on LGBTQ people have been deliberately political. Rights groups fear that if the far right come to power in under two weeks, laws put in place to protect LGBTQ people could be dismantled and violent attacks legitimised.
Issued on: 19/06/2024 -
A drag queen takes part in a LGBTQ visibility march in Lyon, France, on June 16.
© Olivier Chassignole, AFP
By:Lara BULLENS
As the European election results came pouring in on the evening of June 9, it became clear that France’s far-right Rassemblement National (National Rally or RN) would come out on top. And they did, with flying colours. Garnering 31.5 percent of the vote, the party led by Marine Le Pen outshone President Emmanuel Macron’s coalition with almost twice as many votes.
To celebrate the triumph, three Le Pen supporters in their twenties and a member of the violent far-right student group Groupe Union Défense (GUD) went out drinking in the sixth arrondissement of Paris. In search of a bar, they came across a young man walking home alone and approached him, armed with a stick and a belt. Slinging homophobic and transphobic slurs at the 19 year old and calling him a “filthy f**got”, they then punched him in the temple, according to French daily Libération.
Fleeing for safety, the young man headed towards a woman who witnessed the attack and called the police. The four perpetrators were arrested a few minutes later. While in custody, the men made direct references to Jordan Bardella, president of the National Rally. “You’ll see when Bardella is in power and Hitler comes back!” one threatened. “In three weeks, we will be able to smash up f*gs as much as we like. I can’t wait,” said another.
These are no empty threats. Shortly after his defeat in the European elections, Macron unexpectedly called for snap parliamentary elections and dissolved the current National Assembly. Defending his decision as a way to “give back the choice of our parliamentary future” to the French people, the high-risk gamble could see the president forced to appoint a far-right prime minister.
Read moreFrance’s Macron calls snap election in huge gamble after EU polls debacle
With two weeks left before the final vote on July 7, LGBTQ people in France are not only worried about the future of their rights but fear a far-right win will galvanise more homophobic and transphobic attacks like the one that took place in Paris ten days ago.
‘A climate of fear’
“This is why I vote for Marine Le Pen,” a woman aggressively told Ben and Szabi, owners of the Hotel Pinard wine bar in the southern French city of Montpellier on Saturday. “In three years’ time [when the next presidential elections will take place], your bar will be shut down!”
Ben and Szabi, a Franco-Hungarian gay couple who have been together for ten years, opened the wine bar together in 2023. After kindly asking the woman to drink water out of a glass rather than the jug it was in, they were met with homophobic and racist slurs. It was after politely asking the woman and her friends to leave their establishment that she came back to threaten them. “We don’t want this to happen to other people,” Ben said in a post on Instagram. “We are still very shocked.”
France is not new to homophobic and transphobic attacks. In fact, they have been on the rise. LGBTQ groups sounded the alarm on May 16 when the ministry of the interior published a report documenting a 13 percent jump in anti-LGBTQ offences in 2023, compared to 2022. Attacks of a more violent nature, including assaults, threats and harassment, saw a 19 percent spike – with a total of 2,870 cases reported by French police last year.
Now that a far-right leader could potentially become prime minister, the LGBTQ community in France fear these incidents will become more widespread. “These two cases [in Paris and Montpellier] were particularly striking because there were direct references to the National Rally. The motivation was extremely clear,” said Julia Torlet, president and spokesperson for SOS Homophobie – a French NGO that supports victims of anti-LGBTQ attacks.
“We have a helpline and receive many reports of attacks every day,” said Torlet. “But it has become clear that now, a climate of fear has been instilled. People are telling us that they don’t want to leave their homes, that they are scared.”
Blaming a “liberation of homophobic and transphobic speech” inspired by the far right, Torlet said that her organisation has seen a spike in cases of offensive graffiti tags since Macron announced the snap elections on June 9.
And the violence is not only taking place in the streets. Édouard Jouannault-Taylor is head of communications at the Refuge foundation, an organisation tasked with supporting and housing young LGBTQ people in shelters across France who are persecuted by their families. He said that his organisation has seen more “extremist” views become commonplace in recent years, which paves the way for conflict in family settings. “Homophobic and transphobic speech is being liberated. But it goes beyond that, acts are now being liberated too,” he said.
“It is something that we have seen in other European countries. When [far-right leaders] come to power, they don’t always display their homophobia or transphobia outright. But their supporters have no problem in doing so,” said Jouannault-Taylor. “It frees up the energy of all those who oppose LGBTQ rights. That is what we are afraid of.”
Trying to cultivate an LGBTQ-friendly image
Before it was renamed the National Rally, the far-right party was known as the National Front and was founded by Marine Le Pen’s father Jean-Marie Le Pen in 1972. A deeply homophobic figure, Jean-Marie Le Pen once equated AIDS sufferers to “lepers” and described being gay as a “political ideology” – comments for the likes of which he was eventually put on trial in 2018.
Since she took over the party in 2011, Marine Le Pen has tried to soften its racist and homophobic reputation. And though she has even back-pedalled on some of her own pledges, like revoking marriage equality, her political agenda is still a threat to queer rights.
“The National Rally has tried to make itself look more gay-friendly, especially by including gay men in its ranks,” said Torlet. “It’s a way of saying ‘look, there are gays among us, so we are approachable’.”
Le Pen consistently voted against allowing lesbian couples from accessing assisted reproductive techniques, for example, but the law was eventually changed in 2021 to allow lesbian and single women to access the treatment – as well as in vitro fertilisation (IVF).
“And when you look at how the party voted on nine recent laws around LGBTQ rights in the European Parliament, for example, you see that they voted against or abstained eight times out of nine,” Torlet said. “I find that extraordinarily telling.”
As an MEP for the National Rally, Bardella and other members of the party voted against a resolution that condemned Poland for creating zones “free from any LGBTQ ideology” in 2019. They also voted against a declaration designed to make the EU a “freedom zone” for LGBTQ people in 2021. And in 2023, far-right MEPs abstained when an EU vote on the universal decriminalisation of homosexuality was passed.
On the home front, MPs from both the National Rally and the right-wing Les Républicains recently tabled bills that would ban hormone treatment for transgender people under 18. Met with fierce opposition by protestors, the bill was eventually adopted by the Senate on May 29 – but has yet to be put to a final vote in the National Assembly, France’s lower house.
If more far-right and right-wing MPs are voted into parliament after the elections on July 7, the bill has a chance of becoming law.
‘Major consequences’ on rights and safety of LGBTQ community
When it comes to the real dangers LGBTQ people face if the far right comes to power, Torlet explains that “there are two major types of consequences”. The first is legal, and the law on transgender medical treatment for minors is a “concrete example” of a “real threat” to LGBTQ rights.
“If the law passes, [I think] there will be more attacks on the rights of trans people. They will be the first target, that is clear and simple,” said Torlet. “The second target will be same-sex families. We have already seen that happen in neighbouring European countries, like Italy, for example, where [Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni]’s far-right government was quick to crack down on the rights of LGBTQ families.”
Read more‘Ghost parents’: Same-sex couples in Italy are losing their rights
Fear of the far right chiselling away at transgender rights is a sentiment shared by Jouannault-Taylor. “Many of the young people that we house in our shelters are transgender. [If the far-right] comes to power, public policies could be directed against them, against their rights, against their self-determination and their right to realise their full potential,” he said.
The Refuge foundation has also set up a support system for asylum seekers who have had to flee their country because of their sexual orientation or gender identity. Given the staunchly anti-immigrant posture of the National Rally, Jouannault-Taylor is worried this demographic “will no longer be able to be accompanied here in France”.
Beyond dismantling the legal rights LGBTQ people in France have fought for, Torlet said the “second major consequence” will be most visible in “people’s daily lives”, especially regarding the violence they may face in the streets.
“If we have a government that adopts uninhibited discriminatory language … in the streets, people will feel it's legitimate to unleash violence with impunity,” she said.
‘A pretty irresponsible sacrifice’
The first round of parliamentary elections will be held in less than two weeks, on June 30, with a final vote set for July 7. Opinion polls have consistently placed the National Rally first but pollsters who have tried to make a second-round forecast for France's 577 constituencies see the party failing to secure the absolute majority needed to be able to pass laws without allies.
Which is exactly why party president Bardella told CNews TV on Tuesday that “in order to act, I need an absolute majority”, and urged voters to rally behind him and Le Pen. He even told France 2 TV on Tuesday that he would turn down the chance to be prime minister should his voters not hand his party an absolute majority.
The National Rally would need to secure 289 seats for an absolute majority. But even if they don’t, Bardella or Le Pen could still become the next prime minister. In France, it is up to the president to elect a prime minister of his or her choosing.
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Torlet thinks that “Macron’s decision to dissolve parliament was a way for him to try and discredit the National Rally before the 2027 presidential elections”. She believes his strategy is that “for three years, everyone will see whether or not the RN is fit to rule, and will eventually understand that they should not vote for them.
“Except that minorities will be sacrificed on the altar of this [three-year] test. Three years just to discredit the National Rally is a pretty irresponsible sacrifice.”
And in the run-up to the parliamentary elections, Torlet says that “every word counts” for LGBTQ people.
Visiting the island of Sein off the north-western coast of France on Tuesday, Macron chose to adopt the same language used by his far-right counterparts. Speaking to local residents, he criticised the left’s proposal to allow people to register a gender change by simply going to the town hall as “completely grotesque”. Under current regulations, people must go to court and undergo a cumbersome and stigmatising procedure to register a gender change.
In his 2022 presidential campaign, Macron had proposed to make the lives of transgender people easier by getting rid of unnecessary red tape.
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