Alsace-Lorraine Alsace-Lorraine was
de facto annexed by the
Third Reich in . The French Penal Code ceased to apply in 1942, gradually replaced by the German Penal Code in 1941. Residents held a unique status as ethnic Germans (
Volksdeutsche) but not citizens (
Reichsdeutsche). Intense police and administrative repression began in summer 1940, using extrajudicial measures to bypass legal constraints and harshly target homosexuality. While French police did not maintain such registries, they contributed through active participation or by providing records of
indecency convictions. After 1942, expulsions gave way to internments, primarily at the Schirmeck-Vorbruck security camp. While some homosexuals fled repression in France or joined the
French Resistance, most remained, adopting precautions like favoring anonymous relationships or preparing mutual defenses before meetings. Numerous homosexual relationships were openly conducted in the
Foreign Legion. In Paris, homosexual life was not significantly disrupted by the Occupation.
Henry de Montherlant noted that it was even easier to "pick up" young men than before the war. Homosexual meeting places such as Liberty's,
Le Select, Chez Narcisse,
Le Bœuf sur le Toit, or simpler venues like the groves of the
Champ de Mars, the
Strasbourg-Saint-Denis metro station, the
Bois de Vincennes, or public urinals remained heavily frequented, now also by German officers and prostitutes alongside regular patrons. Despite prohibitions by German authorities, many German soldiers engaged in sexual relationships with French civilians. The French defeat was often interpreted as a failure of masculinity, seen as evidence of the decadent and feminized
Third Republic. In this context, the
Vichy regime condemned both male and female homosexuality as unnatural, reversing the 1791 penal code's decriminalization of "sodomy" in 1942. This law criminalized homosexual relations, both male and female, involving minors under 21. The most famous deportee was
Pierre Seel, who published a testimony of his experience in 1994. These arrests targeted only those who had relations with or attempted to seduce German soldiers. However, the virilist policies of the Resistance, liberated France, and
Gaullism ended this brief period, reaffirming the penalization of homosexuality established by Vichy on February 8, 1945. The post-war period was marked by intensified state repression of homosexuality, with several hundred convictions annually in the 1950s under the law prohibiting homosexual relations with minors under 21. In 1960, homosexuality was declared a "national scourge", equated with alcoholism and
prostitution, and the offense of public indecency was aggravated when involving homosexual relations. The two dominant political parties of the era, the Christian-democrat
MRP and the
French Communist Party, viewed heterosexuality as the sole norm, especially as the country aimed to boost its birth rate. Repression extended to culture: homosexuality was nearly absent from artistic representations, and censorship, enforced through her publisher
Gallimard, forced
Violette Leduc to rewrite parts of
Ravages. In 1955,
Daniel Guérin published
Kinsey et la sexualité, detailing the specific oppression faced by homosexuals in France. For women,
Françoise Mallet-Joris wrote
Rempart des béguines in 1951, Nicole Louvier ''Qui qu'en grogne
in 1953, and Irène Monesi Althia'' in 1957. In 1964, the filming of
Les Amitiés particulières, adapted from
the novel by
Roger Peyrefitte, faced sharp criticism, prompting Peyrefitte to publish ''Lettre ouverte à Monsieur François Mauriac, membre de l'Académie française, prix Nobel'', arguing that
François Mauriac's homophobia stemmed from repressed homosexuality, particularly his relationship with
Jean Cocteau. Marie-Andrée Schwindenhammer, a trans woman, connected trans women working at the Parisian transgender cabaret
Le Carrousel with her roommate, Madame Bonnet, an expert in permanent electrolysis hair removal. This event led to the formation of the
Homosexual Front for Revolutionary Action (FHAR). The protesters, a group from the
Women's Liberation Movement including
Maffra,
Christine Delphy,
Monique Wittig, Elisabeth Salvaresi,
Antoinette Fouque, and Anne de Bascher, formed the FHAR that evening. In 1980,
Yves Navarre won the
Prix Goncourt for ''Le Jardin d'acclimatation'', a novel about a young homosexual man undergoing a lobotomy to conform to his parents' expectations of a heterosexual family life. but a decline in public space visibility due to the gradual replacement of public urinals, making
gay cruising more difficult. In 1983,
Homosexualités et socialisme was created.
The AIDS epidemic The "gay cancer" and denial The first mention of
AIDS in France, not yet identified as such, appeared in September 1981 in
Gai Pied, reporting a disease in New York affecting "only fags". That summer,
Willy Rozenbaum treated a homosexual patient with multiple infectious diseases, forming a medical team with
immunologist Jacques Leibowitch, who first hypothesized a
retrovirus cause.
AIDES: The community response , founder of
AIDES, an AIDS advocacy group, established after the death of his partner
Michel Foucault. The community response centered on associations. The earliest, Vaincre le sida (VSL), was founded in August 1983 during the Euro-Mediterranean Summer Universities of Homosexualities by doctor Patrice Meyer, offering patient support, informational brochures, and hotlines. From 1990 to 1999, twenty lesbian associations formed and networked, federating in 1996 as the Coordination Lesbienne Nationale, later the Coordination Lesbienne en France (CLF). It aimed to promote lesbian visibility, legitimize lesbian rights, advocate for asylum for persecuted lesbians, and build networks, coordinating militant and cultural groups like Les lesbiennes font leur cinéma and the Toulouse Lesbian Spring. == 20th century ==