page_title: LGBT culture in Paris
section_title: World War II to present
hierarchical_section_title: LGBT culture in Paris / History / World War II to present
caption_attribution_description: English: Situationist grafitti, Menton, France, 2006 (the 1968 slogan Il est interdit d’interdire !, “It is forbidden to forbid!”, with missing apostrophe).
context_page_description: Paris, the capital of France, has an active LGBT community. In the 1990s, 46% of the country's gay men lived in the city. As of 2004, Paris had 140 LGBT bars, clubs, hotels, restaurants, shops, and other commercial businesses. Florence Tamagne, author of "Paris: 'Resting on its Laurels'?", wrote that there is a "Gaité parisienne"; she added that Paris "competes with Berlin for the title of LGBT capital of Europe, and ranks only second behind New York for the title of LGBT capital of the world." It has France's only gayborhoods that are officially organized.
context_section_description: During the Nazi occupation of France during World War II, the French government raised the age of sexual consent from 13 to 15 for heterosexuals, and to 21 for homosexuals. Penalties for the 'unnatural' practice of homosexual acts with minors were a fine and a prison term of six months to three years.  This homosexual consent law was kept in place after the war, lowered to 18 in 1974 and to 15 in 1982.
  According to Tamagne, Paris retained the LGBT capital image after the end of World War II. In the 1940s, Jean Genet, a vagabond, prostitute and petty criminal, published five autobiographical novels that were explicit in their depictions of homosexuality and criminality,  and were celebrated by Cocteau, Jean-Paul Sartre, Picasso and others in the Parisian literary scene. Foreign LGBT artists and writers continued to seek the relative tolerance of France's capital city; James Baldwin's 1956 novel about homosexuality, Giovanni's Room, was based on time he had spent in Paris.
  In the 1950s and 1960s the police and authorities tolerated homosexuals as long as the conduct was private and out of view.  The Arcadie Association, the first homophile organization in France, and a magazine by the same name, was established in Paris in 1954 by André Baudry, with assistance from Jean Cocteau and Roger Peyrefitte  As a result, Baudry was prosecuted and fined for 'indecent morals' in 1955.  In 1960, an indecent exposure law was introduced which caused more police harassment of gay men and women. In the 1960s, gay males received more harassment from police than lesbians. Between the years of 1953 and 1978 the annual numbers of women convicted of homosexuality ranged between one and twelve. Tamagne characterized this number as "relatively low". Drag performances used male-to-female transsexuals because the police did not allow cisgender males to perform in drag. Gay bar raids occurred during the 1950s and 1960s; there were occasions when the owners of the bars were involved in facilitating the raids. Many lesbians did not visit gay bars and instead socialized in circles of friends. Lesbians who did go to bars often originated from the working class; other women sometimes had internalized self-loathing and/or did not want to damage their reputations.  Chez Moune, opened in 1936,  and New Moon were 20th century lesbian cabarets located in Place Pigalle;  both of them converted to mixed music clubs in the 21st century.
  Following the student and worker uprisings of May, 1968, and the rise of feminism, some Parisian LGBT residents became more radicalized in their approach, resulting in the 1971 creation of the Front homosexuel d'action révolutionnaire (Homosexual Revolutionary Action Front). Historian Julian Jackson defined the creation of this group as the "Stonewall" of French LGBT history, when activists developed a view of the world "In opposition to what had gone on before."  Some lesbians, including author Monique Wittig, eventually broke away from Le Front to form Les Gouines Rouges, the Red Dykes.
  By the 1970s police files on gays and lesbians were destroyed, and many laws against LGBT conduct and people were repealed.
  The rise of AIDS  brought another wave of French LGBT activism to Paris in the late 1980s and early 90s,  though historians have noted that traditional French universalism has sometimes conflicted with American style "identity politics" in French LGBT political movements.
  When marriage was legalized for French LGBT couples in 2013, it was met with hostility by some Parisians.  An anti-gay marriage demonstration occurred in the Esplanade des Invalides that same year. However, 2013 polls have indicated that a majority of the French support same-sex marriage and another poll indicated that 77% of the French viewed that homosexuality should be accepted by society, one of the highest in the world.
caption: May 1968 slogan. Paris. "It is forbidden to forbid." The Homosexual Revolutionary Action Front was created after the ferment of May 68
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