French petition against age of consent laws
In 1977, a petition was addressed to the French parliament calling for the abrogation of several articles of the age of consent law. The primary argument behind the petition was the disparity in age of consent created by a previous piece of legislation, which made heterosexual sex legal at the age of 15, but prohibited sodomy and similar acts until age 18. A number of French intellectuals—including Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, Jacques Derrida, Louis Aragon, Roland Barthes, Simone de Beauvoir, Jean-Paul Sartre, Félix Guattari, Michel Leiris, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Philippe Sollers , Jacques Rancière, Jean-François Lyotard, Francis Ponge, and various prominent doctors and psychologists—signed the petition. In 1979 two open letters were published in French newspapers defending individuals arrested under charges of statutory rape, in the context of abolition of age of consent laws. Background. In 1945, an ordinance was enacted by the French government that established an age of consent in France of 15. However, an article within this ordinance forbade sodomy and similar "sexual relations against nature" with any person under the age of 21. In 1974, this was lowered to 18. This was perceived by activists, including  Michel Foucault and Guy Hocquenghem, as being discriminatory against gay men. Michel Foucault argued that assuming a teenager is incapable of sexual agency “that a teen is incapable of explaining what happened and was incapable of giving his consent are two abuses that are intolerable, quite unacceptable.” Foucault also believed consent, as a concept, was a "contractual notion", and that it was not a sufficient measure of whether harm was being conducted Foucault, Sartre, and newspapers such as "Libération" and "Le Monde" each defended the idea of sexual relationships between teenagers. The petition. Michel Foucault stated that the petition was  signed by himself, by the novelist/gay activist Guy Hocquenghem, the actor/play-writer/jurist Jean Danet, pediatrician and child psychoanalyst Françoise Dolto and also by people belonging to a wide range of political positions. The main body of the text calls for the end of discrimination against homosexual men encoded in the 1945 ordinance. It then calls for a commission called the Commission de Révision du Code Pénal (Penal Code Revision Commission) to review the age of consent and recommend changes to parliament. On April 4, 1978, a conversation detailing the reasons for their pro-abolition positions was broadcast  by radio France Culture in the program ""Dialogues"". The participants, Michel Foucault, Jean Danet and Guy Hocquenghem, had all signed the 1977 petition, along with other intellectuals. They argued the idea of legal consent is a contractual notion and a "trap", saying that "no one makes a contract before making love". The conversation has been published as “"Sexual Morality and the Law"” and later reprinted as ""The Danger of Child Sexuality"". Publication of open letters. An open letter signed by 69 people, including Gilles Deleuze, Roland Barthes, Philippe Sollers, and Louis Aragon was published in "Le Monde" in 1977, on  the eve of the trial of three Frenchmen (Bernard Dejager, Jean-Claude Gallien, and Jean Burckardt) all accused of having sex with 13- and 14-year-old girls and boys. Two of them had then been in temporary custody since 1973 and the letter referred to this fact as scandalous. The letter claimed there was a disproportion between the qualification of their acts as a crime and the nature of the reproached acts, and also a contradiction since adolescents in France were fully responsible for their acts from the age of 13. The text also opined that if 13-year -old girls in France had the right to receive the pill, then they also should be able to consent, arguing for the right of "14- and 13-year-olds" "to have relations with whomever they choose." A similar letter was published in the paper "Libération" in 1979, supporting Gérard R., an accused child sex criminal awaiting his trial for eighteen months, signed by 63 persons, stating that Gérard R. lived with young girls aged 6 to 12 and that they were happy with the situation. The letter was later reproduced in the paper "L'Express", in the issue of March 7 , 2001. Legacy. In 1982, the French government removed its clauses regarding sodomy and similar acts "against nature" from the 1945 ordinance.