Why the Right Is Still Not a Friend of LGBT+ People

Is this an unfortunate oversight? Or does it reflect a sudden realization that it was indecent to entrust Bruno Retailleau with responsibility for such a matter? Between his two appointments in the Barnier and then Bayrou governments, the Interior Minister lost one of his responsibilities.

According to a presidential decree dated October 10, 2024, he was responsible for the fight "against discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, as well as against intersex people." Three months later, in another decree dated January 8, 2025, the mention disappeared from the minister's missions, which declared that gender identity was "a vague concept originating in the United States" and that it was a "feeling."

Newly elevated to the rank of Minister of State, Bruno Retailleau no longer has to worry about the protection of LGBTQIA+ people . An issue which, in any case, has never been the subject of the Vendée conservative, nor that of his camp, the right. And this, despite the fact that the latter is preparing to vote, Tuesday, May 6 in the Senate, for a bill by PS senator Hussein Bourgi on the recognition by the nation and the reparation of the harm suffered by people convicted of homosexuality between 1942 and 1982. Moreover, even there, the LR senator, Francis Szpiner , finds fault, refusing to compensate the victims: "I am against financial compensation, but for symbolic compensation," he stated at the end of 2023.

Contrary to appearances, the right has not become a friend to homosexuals. "It hasn't abandoned its old demons," assures PCF senator Ian Brossat. "We must remember that if these laws were implemented, it's because there were parliamentarians, particularly from the right, who voted for them."

"Throughout history, the right has always been against the opening of new rights. For them, homosexuals were first a "social scourge" then "AIDS sufferers", and now they are "wokists". In other words, the scarecrow they wave to avoid progress," denounces Tarik, a member of the Inverti·e·s, a communist collective "trans, queers, dykes". And there is no need to go back to the debates on the PACS, which only Roselyne Bachelot defended within her political family, to find traces of the homophobic undertones of the right.

Nor even to the statements made twelve years ago by almost all UMP officials, at the time of the adoption of marriage for all. A staunch opponent of same-sex marriage, Bruno Retailleau is now content to say that he has "his convictions," just to make it clear that while he no longer questions the union between two people of the same sex, he nonetheless believes in it.

Michel Barnier, then Prime Minister, had no problem appointing Senator Laurence Garnier to the government, as she opposed the ban on "conversion therapies" that claim to "cure" homosexual, bisexual, or lesbian people by "converting" them to heterosexuality. Rachida Dati abstained on a similar bill in the European Parliament.

There are many examples, such as those parliamentarians who refused to open medically assisted procreation (MAP) to people of the same sex, in the name of "defending the family" . Or Christophe Béchu, former minister and Horizons mayor of Angers (Maine-et-Loire) who had withdrawn, in 2016, an HIV prevention campaign featuring a homosexual couple, on the pretext of "protecting younger children".

But the offensive is more insidious today and is migrating towards transphobia . "It's harder for them to be openly homophobic, because we fought for our rights. Now, the right and the far right are using us for their delusion of a supposed clash of civilizations, in the face of a "barbaric" East where LGBT people don't exist. They forget that here, we fought against them," Tarik recalls.

But "the right is now using the same rhetoric against trans people." Ian Brossat observes this "anti-woke" drift from a Senate in the midst of "CNews-ization," where a law was proposed to regulate, or even prevent, gender transitions among minors. "Not to mention the field of sex education, with all the fantasies surrounding the question of gender, accused of 'creating' homosexuality and transgender identity," notes the Communist representative. While the right has been forced to progress, it remains struck by the same moral panic that a slight facelift is not enough to make us forget.