France Makes Homophobic Speech A Crime

[davidinalameda]

http://www.365gay.com/newscon04/12/122204france.htm

The French Senate Wednesday night gave final approval to legislation making it a criminal offense to speak or publish homophobia.

The bill adds sexuality to an existing law banning hate speech against other minorities.

Under the legislation, anyone who provokes hatred or violence on the basis of sex or sexual orientation could be fined up to $60,000 and be subject to one year in jail.


Viva la France!

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

1. All right!

Anyone sort of wish that rw fundy preacher in CO would take a trip to Paris to spout off his hatred for gays?

[Worst Username Ever]

2. Hmmm. don't know if I like this.

Freedom of speech is freedom of speech, IMHO. That includes hate speech, unfortunately. Directly harrassing another is illegal, but if someone wants to start a website or hold a protest that is anti-gay or anti-jew or anti-white-middleclass-male, that is their business.

[eleonora]

3. I disagree

Freedom is one thing, the spread of hate is another. If the speech has the motivation to inspire hatred on the basis of sex or religion, then it should be banned. I never understood why the KKK can still congregate freely in this country.

[tk2kewl]

5. This creates a subjective line

where some speech is legal and other is not. slippery slope if you ask me.

[Worst Username Ever]

6. Saying which speech is illegal and which speech is not illegal

pretty much undoes the whole premise of freedom of speech.

There are many who feel that my anti-iraq speech is hateful, and spreads hatred/intolerance toward are troops. Should it be illegal?

As long as it is not directed at one person (again, this is harassment, which is illegal), you can say whatever you want, even if I don't like it or find it horribly offensive.

[RoyGBiv]

7. The same law that allows us to congretate ...

[eallen]

8. The 1st amendment gives both you & the KKK the right to speak your piece..

Of that I'm very glad, even though I disagree with both your philosophy and the KKK's.

[tk2kewl]

4. I am with you.

Making it illegal doesnt stop it anyway.

[latteromden]

9. Agreed. The part banning violence and hate crimes is fine. But free speech

should be protected, like it or not. However, I will smack anyone that insists on hate speech. ;)

[Moloch]

13. I totally agree with you...

Homophobic and racist speech is disgusting and ignorant.
They should have the right to say what they want.
I have the right to call their speech disgusting and ignorant.

[Laughing Mirror]

14. Hate laws already exist in France against racism and antisemitism

This new law puts homophobia and sex discrimination in its same book of laws alongside racism and antisemitism. Now you can get a stiff fine and a year in prison if you're found guilty of these harmful practices.

Provoking hate, violence and discrimination against anybody because of their sex or sexual orientation is now a misdemeanor.

The law authorizes a High Authority to go after any form of legal discrimination based on sex, race, ethnicity, religion or convictions, disability, age, or sexual orientation. Victims of homophobia and sex discrimination can now sue for libel or defamation. They could not before.

This is French society. The laws are no doubt imperfect. But at least they're trying to come to terms with the dire effects in society when there's discrimination and sexism. At least they're trying to put into effect laws as a way to sensitize the citizenry against all forms of hate.

The new law, which I have not read, seems to go beyond the broad concept of Freedom of Speech as it is understood in America.

[Name removed]

10. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[SariesNightly]

11. While I'm against hate speech..

..against groups of people, it's their interpretation I'm curious about.

What if criticism, constructive or otherwiseis considered 'hate'. France may become a society of public acceptance and private denial, that in itself is an oppressed society.

Where's the fine print on this deal?

[Brian_Expat]

12. This law is evidence of French homophobia

If France was REALLY concerned about making things easier for gay people, it would open up marriage and other social institutions fully to gays, rather than implement this Orwellian window-dressing turd.

Chirac's crusade to ban gay adoption and fight gay marriage tells me where his REAL priorities lie. And it's not in defending gay people.

[Laughing Mirror]

16. I did not know Chirac was on a crusade to ban gay adoption

or fight gay marriage. It was his political party who voted this law into place in the Senate just the other night. Details and sources documenting this crusade would be greatly appreciated.

I know that Chirac's not exactly a strident mouthpiece for same sex marriage, but what old professional politico Chirac's age is? Nelson Certainly not old Poppy Bush, nor his son either.

Please tell me about this crusade of Chirac's. I've not heard of it.

[Brian_Expat]

17. Oh, easily done. . .

The RPR party's crusade against gay marriage:

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/06/05/1086377192090.html?oneclick=true

A shopkeeper and a male nurse exchanged rings and kisses in France's first gay wedding today, but the conservative government immediately moved to punish the mayor who presided over what it considered was an "illegal" ceremony.

Noel Mamere, mayor of the suburb of Begles in the south-western city of Bordeaux and a leading figure in the opposition Greens party, celebrated the wedding of 31-year-old shopworker Bertrand Charpentier and 34-year-old nurse Stephane Chapin in a blaze of publicity at the municipal building where he works.

. . . snip. . .

"I have started a sanctions procedure against the mayor of Begles," Interior Minister Dominique de Villepin told journalists in Paris one hour after the wedding ended.

. . . snip. . .

The centre-right government of President Jacques Chirac is determined to keep gay partnerships restricted to a French civil contract known as PACS that took effect in 1999, which confers some but not all the rights of a marriage. Raffarin, Chirac and other officials have interpreted French law to say that a marriage must exclusively be between a man and a woman.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3770853.stm

Both men have temporarily left Begles because of the intense media attention.

The couple have said they will take their case to the European Court of Human Rights if the marriage is rendered void.

President Jacques Chirac has stated his opposition to gay weddings, instead proposing the strengthening of a law introduced in 1998 to give more rights to cohabiting couples, regardless of their sexes.

And on gay adoption:

http://www.baywindows.com/news/2002/03/28/NewsBriefs/International.Briefs-225204.shtml

Both top candidates for French president -- incumbent Jacques Chirac and Prime Minister Lionel Jospin -- told the gay magazine TÍtu March 22 that they oppose gay adoption.

``Every child needs a mother and a father -- female references and male references -- to construct his identity," Chirac said.

Note that gay adoption is banned in many of the European countries that pride themselves on their so-called progressive nature -- including all the Scandinavian ones.

The UK, however, allows it.

[Laughing Mirror]

18. RPR no longer exists as a party

Chirac's current party is UMP, the party which, along with the other right wing party UDF, voted this hate law into law in the Senate the other night. The Communists and Socialists abstained.

True, some in his party have in the past and recently made homophobic statements. Like Socialist Jospin, Conservative Chirac is for the PACs civil union arrangement France has in place today but is not for same sex marriage. It is not what I want, but such a stance is not exactly a crusade against gay adoption and marriage. Do you know what a crusade really is? It's not that.

[Brian_Expat]

20. It's doubtlessly a crusade

Stridently opposing gay equality for a shallow half-measure, threatening a mayor for holding a gay marriage, and stridently opposing adoption equality are all crusades against gay equality.

Not as dramatic as George W. Bush, but crusades nonetheless.

As a person who resides in the European Union (Great Britain), European pretentions of being oh-so-progressive annoy me. The "separate and unequal" partnership scheme in France is an effort to avoid granting French gay people full equality, as is opposition to gay adoption and is as "progressive" as anything that Jeb Bush's Florida would do.

This Orwellian speech control law is just window dressing so that Chirac and his conservative allies can claim to be pro-gay without doing anything (meaningful) to eliminate the rules in society that make homosexuals appear to be less -- such as Chirac's opinion that gay people don't deserve marriage but something less, and that gay people are unfit parents and thus shouldn't adopt.

If Chirac wants to eliminate homophobia, he should start with his own government's profoundly homophobic policies.

[Laughing Mirror]

22. Hello Neighbor

I live in France, and have so for the past 20 years. I never imagined I'd ever be speaking up in defense of Jacques Chirac, but here I am defending Jacques Chirac.

He may not think we should enjoy the same laws as the rest of the population, but he, like Socialist Prime Minister Lionel Jospin who was defeated last year, is only following French opinion, 57% of whom are against gay adoption. If you are going to call Chirac an anti gay crusader, you have include the majority of the French population in your definition.

French law changes slowly. Most French think PACs civil union is equal to marriage and is good enough for the time being. They are wrong, and I've always been very clear about my position. But, maybe with these new anti-hate laws which point in the right direction and which are intended to push the general perception people have about gays and other despised groups in the right direction, the attitudes of the French majority will call out, at last, for complete and non-negotiable equality for us all finally.

Crusades against gays. Anita Bryant was on her Save the Children anti-gay crusade in the 70s. She was a anti-gay crusaders. The marvelous Fred Phelps (I'm sure he's one of your favorites too) is on his God Hates You anti-gay crusade. He is a crusader against gays. Jacques Chirac's party new anti-hate law would make Phelps the crusader a criminal.

[Brian_Expat]

23. I've heard similar defences

But until things change in France (a profoundly homophobic society), Chirac and Bush appear cut from the same cloth on this issue, and France has little to be proud of in this area.

[Laughing Mirror]

25. Do you have gay marriage in the UK?

No, I didn't think so. If France is so profoundly homophobic, why is Paris's very out gay mayor also very popular with the people? Why is the country passing laws to try to eliminate homophobia?

Have you ever been here? Have you read the articles linked in this thread? None of them support the blanket idiotic statements you seem to just be spouting off for what purpose I am not able to determine.

[Brian_Expat]

28. We have civil partnerships, thanks to the Civil Partnership Act

And gays can adopt, and the CP Act provides ALL the rights of marriage, not just a few of them. Not perfect, perhaps, but far superior to Chirac's stuff.

Far be it from me to stick up for Tony Blair, but France doesn't have a leg to stand on vis-a-vis "opposing homophobia" when it pursues laws that declare that gays are unfit parents and don't deserve all the rights and responsibilities of marriage.

[Laughing Mirror]

29. Actually France is not pursuing laws making gays unfit parents

In fact, gays can and always have been able to adopt children (or anybody they want, for that matter, due to strict inheritance laws in France). A gay person alone can adopt. The problem is, a gay couple cannot adopt as a couple, even though that couple is recognized as legal by the civil union arrangement called PACs. But a single person can adopt, gay or not, and this is the loophole given by the French homophobes for not feeling the need to grant full equality. The adopted child can still live a "normal" life with the gay parents, the story goes, even though legally it only belongs to one of them.

France is, like most places, taking her sweet time about giving full civil rights for LGBTs, whether it's Chirac or Jospin or Raffarin or whoever running things. France will though. There will be too much force from within not to. In the meantime, she corrects her anti-hate laws to include homophobic speech and hate crimes, and that is a good thing, whether you look at it as crumbs off the table or not. I can see how people could think that, especially if they don't understand French culture and law well enough and can only interpret news from France, which is a Latin country, through the focus of, let's say, anglo-saxon culture and law.

I think today only Belgium and Netherlands have full rights same sex marriage, with Spain soon to have it too. We have to keep up the pressure and not bend one inch both in France and in UK. And then there's the rest of Europe, and the world too!

[Brian_Expat]

33. The fact remains. . .

Gay couples cannot adopt in France. They can in the UK and even in much of the USA.

[Laughing Mirror]

35. What about foreign partners

Forget the US for a second. How does the very progressive U.K. treat foreign partners of its GLBT citizens? Are they immediately recognized as lawfully wedded partners with full rights and benefits? If not, what hoops do they have to jump through to show their worthiness?

Just curious.

To say gay couples cannot adopt in France is misleading. They can individually adopt children and raise the children as a couple. That is what they are doing now and no doubt will do until the day, probably sooner than later, when they can legally adopt as a couple.

[Brian_Expat]

36. The Civil Partnership Act treats foreign partners as spouses

in all areas, including immigration.

The UK also allows unmarried partners (gay or straight) to immigrate after two years' cohabitation under the Unmarried Partners Rule, no registration required.

To say gay couples cannot adopt in France is misleading. They can individually adopt children and raise the children as a couple.

Individual adoptions are not as likely to go through as adoptions by hetero couples. Whereas the UK recognises gay or straight couples as equal, all other things considered, the way it should be everywhere. It's still unequal.

If Chirac and Co. want to do something meaningful, they'll address those inequalities first, rather than passing window-dressing legislation like the censorship law.

[Laughing Mirror]

37. So you have to wait two years

Do straight couples have to wait two years?

Since the UK just got the Civil Partnership Act of 2004 this year I guess that means they've had the benefit of time to work out some of that flaws that stand out in similar earlier acts from other countries, such as France and it's outmoded PACs, in effect since 1999.

In those five years, the UK has had time to play a little catch up with its neighbors. Still not as good as Belgium, Netherlands, and soon Spain, but Bravo all the same!

[Brian_Expat]

38. Yep

Do straight couples have to wait two years?

Yes. Straight or gay couples under the unmarried partner rule have to wait the same amount of time.

Since the UK just got the Civil Partnership Act of 2004 this year I guess that means they've had the benefit of time to work out some of that flaws that stand out in similar earlier acts from other countries, such as France and it's outmoded PACs, in effect since 1999.

Of course, all the rights that PACs give to members have been available to unmarried couples (of all genders) in the UK since 1997. The CP legislation is just a partnership registry that gives the remaining rights of marriage to gay people and equalises the system. It's literally marriage under a different name. Not perfect (I'd prefer full marriage) but quite nice.

Still not as good as Belgium, Netherlands

Not true either. In Belgium and the Netherlands, gay adoption is still illegal, and only a couple containing at least one EU citizen can get a same-sex marriage (no such restriction exists for heterosexual couples).

The British CP system allows anyone from anywhere in the world to get a civil partnership, and unlike the Benelux system or other CP registries, also recognises overseas arrangements, including marriages and civil unions in Vermont and the Nordic countries, as a CP automatically.

The only country that really has a right to brag right now about gay marriage is Canada -- it's the only country where gays from around the world are totally equal to straights.

In the mean time, I still stand by my statement that Chirac would do a lot better to equalise his PACS, at the very least, if he wants to combat homophobia.

[SnowBack]

31. France has always seemed less homophobic than the U.S. to me...

It's nice to see EU members moving forward on Gay issues...

I wouldn't worry too much about the statements you've been reading on here... Certain members on here love to throw stuff in without any evidence to back it up...

If you eventually learn to IGNORE them, you'll find you can have rational discussions...

[Brian_Expat]

32. lol

I love the personal attack and comparison to the USA all wrapped up in one.

You seem to have a habit of comparing things to the USA and concluding that since it's better, it's nirvana.

Moi, je pense que vous ne savez rien au sujet du monde. :)

[leftyandproud]

15. yes, viva le france...welcome to 1984. *NT*

[davidinalameda]

19. just curious--how many of you have been subjected to

homophobia or people yelling fag or queer at you

as in let's the beat the faggot up or get the queer?

[Brian_Expat]

21. Probably most of us

But I value civil rights, including freedom of speech, far more than the right to not have some obnoxious twat should an epithet at me from time to time.

[seaj11]

24. Another reason for right-wing nutjobs to hate France!

I feel like going to McDonald's and loudly ordering FRENCH fries. (Yes, I know they're not called that because they're from France.)

[booley]

26. Good motives, bad idea

of course, we Americans (especially American Liberals) have this major hard on for the first ammendment so undoubtidly I am biased.

But you don't counter hate and ignorance with censorship.

I guess the test is..and I don't know enough about the law to be sure..does this law cover ONLY people who specificly incite vilolence against gay people? Becuase that to me is the same as inciting a riot or provoking somebody to murder somebody else.

If it does more then that, it's a bad law.

[RumpusCat]

27. Don't like it, same as hate crime laws...

I am with you, I do support the kind of 'hate' laws that use a perpetrator's words and actions as evidence of premeditation, or that criminalize inciting violence, but I don't support criminalizing other speech or thought.

Besides, if the homophobes don't speak up, we'll never know which people to cross off our polite society list.

I'd like to see the (translation) of the text of this law.

[Laughing Mirror]

30. It means Fred Phelps and his group demonstrating God Hates Fags

on a street in France would be arrested, fined 60,000 Euros and be subject to a year in jail, the same as if they were out in the street with their placards saying God Hates Arabs or God Hates Jews, or whatever group that might be defamed.

Does this answer your question?

I haven't read the law, which was an anti-discrimination law already on the books. Now that law extends its coverage to gays.

[Brian_Expat]

34. Speech codes suck

I'd much rather know who the bigots are, out in the open, than have then undermine me from a position of silence and complicity.

[antigone382]

39. Well, in America, we also have laws against public profanity.

There are a few situations when some restriction of speech is, in my opinion and the opinion of many lawmakers, justified. As you mentioned, inciting violence is one of those, but others include abusive language directed at individuals, as mentioned above. In America, there are laws against using profane language and gestures in public, and while I can understand disagreement with the Constitutional legitimacy of those laws, FWIW, the Supreme Court has repeatedly found they are perfectly within the bounds of the 1st Amendment.

If you choose to go along with these criteria for laws restricting free speech, and choose to apply them universally, and not just within the United States (acknowledging that in reality they are not applied universally), then racial, homophobic, and other bigoted slurs could be justifiably banned. As for banning other hate speech, such as sermons teaching that a specific group of people are inherently evil, I just don't know. My personal disgust with such views admittedly clouds my perceptions a little.

Of course, I suppose all of this is moot, since these are French laws anyway, not American ones, and I don't know precisely to what extent these hate speech laws truly limit speech. However, I think it's at least an effort at taking a step in the right direction, and for that I have to give some credit.

[dsc]

40. This is not a good idea

I have no sympathy for haters but imagine enemies of gays having the same power of regulating speech. Would you want Falwell deciding what was and wasn't hate speech?