The Dictionary of Homophobia (59 page)

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—Essentialism/Constructionism; Family; Gender Differences; Heterosexism; Lesbophobia; Marriage; Parenting; Symbolic Order; Tolerance; Universalism/Differentialism.

FILM.
See
Cinema

FRANCE

For a long time, France has had an ambiguous attitude toward homosexuality: as a revolutionary power, France was the first country to decriminalize it (in 1791), but at the same time, due to its
Catholic
and Latin influences, it has also tended to associate homosexuality with
sin
and disgrace. France’s liberal morality, long associated with the national identity, has thus remained strictly heterosexual and may in fact be tacitly homophobic (the idea of homosexuality being “
against nature
” was well received in France). The history of the emancipation of France’s homosexuals is not linear: while the visibility of gays and lesbians increased during World War I and the 1920s (at least in the large cities and according to literary works of the time), the period starting with the Vichy years to the beginning of the 1970s was clearly a setback: this was the era of homosexuality as a “social scourge.”

The Middle Age & the Modern Era
The popular prejudice toward homosexuality goes back to ancient times, which relates it in particular to sexual passivity and a lack of physical
virility
. The attitude of those in power has had a more complex evolution. While the eleventh and twelfth centuries saw homosexuality among monks become commonplace—as well as the development of a gay subculture, according to gay historian John Boswell—the second half of the thirteenth century established the theological and canonical stigmatization of homosexuals; a consequence of the Third Lateran Council of 1179, the first ecumenical council to condemn homosexuality.
The Complaint of Nature
by French theologian Alain de Lille articulated the awakening moral fury behind this phenomenon that affected the whole of the Christian West; between 1250 and 1300, homosexual acts, until then largely ignored by European law, became a crime punishable by death.

During this time, homosexuals were the victims of many phenomena that in some ways were interconnected. There was a growing fascination with the figure of the goddess of nature as an arbiter of moral
theology
; according to Boswell, it was ironic that a mythological figure who came unmistakably from paganism now had influence over dogmatic theology. Other phenomena of the time which had an impact on the attitude toward homosexuals included the growing hatred toward minorities, the anti-Islamic xenophobia linked to the Crusades, and the connections made (particularly by the Catholic Church) between sodomy and
heresy
; it is significant that in the twelfth century, the homosexual was often called a
hérite
, based on the word “heretic.” (It seems apparent that the Church—which had a difficult time ensuring the celibacy of priests—took this position in part to refute accusations of homosexuality lodged against it during this time.) In the end, Parisian theology of the thirteenth century firmly condemned homosexuality; for St Albert the Great, it was the most severe type of sexual sin because it simultaneously offended “grace, reason and nature.” For St Thomas Aquinas, the sexuality of men had to be heterosexual and monogamous, “like that of birds” (in this analogy he repeated a common popular myth that homosexuality did not exist among animals). He also stressed that
vices
that were “against nature”—such as masturbation, bestiality, and homosexuality, as well as heterosexuality that did not have procreation as its goal—were the most contemptible forms of sexuality; he compared homosexuality to violent or revolting acts of the worst sort, such as cannibalism, bestiality, and even the ingestion of feces. As such, Thomas Aquinas gave credence to popular prejudices of the time; following him, no Catholic theologian dared to defend homosexuality.

Having obtained the support of theologians, homophobic legislation in France first appeared between 1246 and 1300. The
coutume
(law) of Touraine-Anjou in 1246 set out, in Paragraph 78, for sodomites to be burned at the stake, a sentence that also appeared in the
coutume
of Paris in 1270.
Le Livre de jostice et de plet
, compiled by the legal school of Orléans in 1260, made a distinction between buggery (heresy) and sodomy (homosexuality), and further stated: “He who is proven a sodomite must lose his balls; … a woman who does it must each time lose a limb, and the third time, be
burned
.” Under Philip the Fair (1285–1314), the illegal status of homosexuals was set in place, which would remain that way until the French Revolution. Between 1317 and 1789, the kingdom of France recorded at least thirty-eight executions for the crime of sodomy; the number is relatively low, presumably because authorities refused to apply the sentence to all cases of homosexuality that were made known to them, fearing that it would publicize the crime that was to be punished. The imperative for discretion can be further explained by the fact that documents relating to the cases of sodomy were burned along with the condemned, “so that there was no remnant of this abomination”; the unmentionable character of the crime was also referred to as the “mute sin.” As late as 1750, it was emphasized that one must use the pyre “due to the indecency of these sorts of examples that teaches youth what it does not know” and, at the end of the Ancien Régime, Louis-Sébastien Mercier wrote that “the punishment of this vileness is a public
scandal
… a shameful show that must be covered by the thickest veil.” On the other hand, religious authorities were rather indulgent when culprits were teenagers (prescribing rather soft sentences for them) and monastic homosexuality, particularly in liberal orders (Clunisiens, Carmelites) had continued to be relatively common.

The Templars’ affair (1307–14) was the first case of wide magnitude in France that focused on homosexuals or men reputed to be such (the reality of gay practices within the Templar order continues to divide historians). Templars belonged to an order that was both religious and military, charged with ensuring the protection of the Holy Land. While the order had lost some of its military usefulness with the fall of the last piece of the Latin state in Palestine in 1291, it still had very rich possessions in the West. But the Templars were refusing to accept the fusion of the three great military orders, the Templars, Hospitallers and Teutonic Knights, that was proposed by Philip the Fair. Following a denunciation made around 1305–06 by a certain Esquieu de Floyran, the king of France charged the Templars with heresy and sodomy (it was thought that the initiation of Templars included kisses on the mouth, navel, anus, and penis; it was also thought that the order encouraged its members to make love to each other rather than at the brothel with prostitutes; in short, they were suspected of being, with respect to sex, under “Muslim influence”). The Templars, so accused were victims of a carefully laid trap (approximately 2,000 arrests in the whole kingdom of France), tortured with severe
violence
that induced confessions, then judged outside all respect of procedures (a theologian of Paris University contended that “the proof of facts makes the crime of public record”), and for a number of them, condemnation to the pyre: fifty-four were burned in Paris in May 1310 and Grand Master of the Order Jacques de Molay, in March 1314; there were other pyres in the towns of Senlis and Carcassonne. Philip the Fair’s personal motives were not clear: did he really believe the Templars were homosexual? Did he only want to accelerate the fusion of orders or lay his hands on the Templars’ wealth? It is, however, interesting to note that the same Philip the Fair had a few years earlier, in 1303, brought the same accusation against his mortal enemy, Pope Boniface VIII, at the height of the fight over clerical taxation and theological-political supremacy between the pope and the king. It is clear that the accusation of homosexuality was extremely serious, and used as a last resort.

Two centuries later, homophobia, becoming also a form of xenophobia (it was called the “Italian
vice
”), reinforced the religious cleaving and blossomed in political satire. Renaissance
Italy
knew a higher gay visibility under the effect of growing urbane neo-Platonism and the cult of physical beauty displayed by painters and sculptors. Italians who came to France in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were frequently accused of introducing a condemnable sexuality to the Kingdom of the Lilies. Through Italians, male homosexuality is now associated with luxury and excessive preoccupation with physical appearances, more suited to the domain of women than of men.

The theme of effeminacy of elites, which first appeared in the fourteenth century at the time of great defeats by the English, was revived under
Henri III
(1574–89): The king’s dainties (see
favorites)
were said to be his lovers and, moreover, men at court were dressing up as women, which was particularly scandalous, as is recalled by Sylvie Steinberg: “men that wear women’s clothing breach the known ideal set for their gender.” In the context of religious wars, all this fed Protestantism, in particular Huguenotism, which was expressed by Théodore Agrippa D’Aubigné in
Les Tragiques
. According to D’Aubigné, Henri III’s Court of Valois represented the world turned upside down:

Those that really reign, those are real kings, / That establish laws over their passions, / That reign over themselves, of a constant mind / Break fickle and powerless ambition; / Not bisexual, effeminate monsters, / corrupted, bourdeliers and higher born / more servants of prostitutes than Lords over men. (“Princes,” c. 663–69).

The exact nature of the relation between Henri III and the dainties is not very clear (they all seem to have had feminine relations); what is important here is that the court and the people saw something sexual in it, as well as monetary reward. Even Ronsard wrote a stanza that describes the king’s companions as exchanging sexual favors for money:

The King as is said lays beside, kisses and licks / Of his darling fresh-faced dolls, night and day. / They for money, lend him one after the other / Their curvaceous backsides and endure the breach. / These asses turned cunts swallow up more goods / Than the Gulf of Scylla hated by the Ancients.

Accusations of sodomy and tyranny were combined in satirical
literature
: dainties’ avarice ruined the state, and consequently depleted the country, as Edward II’s lovers were supposed to have depleted England at the beginning of the fourteenth century. During the time of the Fronde civil war (1648–53), we find the same accusations against Cardinal Mazarin: numerous pamphlets and libels accused him of being a “
bougre bougrant
” (“sodomizing sodomite”) and a “
bougre bougré
” (“sodomized sodomite”), for having tried to infect the young King Louis XIV and having succeeded in contaminating his younger brother,
Monsieur
, and of having converted the Queen herself, Anne of Austria, “to the Italian vice”). Here, one can note the importance of the theme of foreign homosexuality: homosexuality was so vile that it couldn’t be French; and sodomites were foreign bodies doggedly ruining the country.