"Pederasty"
Decriminalized in France
France, 1791 - In the aftermath of the French revolution
and under the influence of the humanism of French Enlightenment philosophy, France became
the first modern Western nation to decriminalize "unnatural acts" in 1791.
Before the revolution, "pederasty",
the word the French used to describe all eroticism between members of the same sex, had
been a capital offense that subjected offenders to death by fire. Unlike the British for whom a charge
of buggery could only be applied to men, the French had a long tradition in which sex
between women was considered criminal, and was also a capital offense. Court records from
the 18th Century show that pederasts were harassed by the police, but the death penalty
was applied only twice for the simple crime of unnatural sex between men between 1714 and
1783.
Police records show that the Parisian subculture
was well known, and that the police harassed and arrested many for sodomitical behavior,
but seldom took the cases to court.
In intellectual circles, the rise of Rationalist and
Humanist philosophy led to discussions about sodomy. Though most writers
on the subject described "pederastic" practices as depraved and monstrous, most felt that burning sodomites was
shameful and scandalous. Condorcet went furthest when he argued that this "base
vice" shouldn't be criminal at all since it didn't violate the rights of any other man.
The French Revolution and The Rights of
Man
In 1789, the French Revolution began. Revolutionary politicians were
generally tolerant of sodomites, and even included some in the government. Deeply
influenced by the optimistic secular humanism of philosophers like Rousseau, the French
Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen was a staunchly anti-clerical document
that opposed the legislation of religious morality. Article IV defined liberty to which
all men have a right; article V follows, and forbids the government from using laws to
unduly constrain that liberty:
IV. Liberty consists in the ability to do anything which does not harm
others.
V. The Law can only forbid actions which are injurious to society...
In 1789, under the influence of these libertarian principles and with the
intent of stripping the church of its political power, the Constituent Assembly began to
draft a new penal code that removed "crimes against nature" and decriminalized
all forms of consensual adult sexuality so long as it occurred in private.
When it was ratified
in 1791, only rape remained on the books as a sexual crime. France
became the first European nation to
overthrow the Christian prohibition against same-sex love. Unfortunately for French
sodomites, the new penal code was more libertarian in principle than in practice.
Though nominally legal, people caught engaged in same-sex activity or
propositioning others were persecuted by police and the courts just as they had been
before the revolution. Sometimes men caught propositioning one another were convicted of
public indecency, but just as in pre-revolutionary times, convictions for specific crimes
were rare. Instead, using their broad powers, police exiled or briefly imprisoned
"pederasts".
References
Davies, Norman, 1996. Europe: A History. New York: Oxford University
Press.
Ragan, Bryant T., 1996."The Enlightenment Confronts
Homosexuality" in Jeffrey Merrick and Bryant Ragan, eds., 1996. Homosexuality in
Modern France. New York: Oxford University Press.
Sibalis, Michael D., 1996. "The Regulation of Male Homosexuality in
Revolutionary and Napoleonic France, 1789-1815" in Jeffrey Merrick and Bryant Ragan,
1996, Homosexuality in Modern France. New York: Oxford University Press.
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© 1998
Andrew Wikholm
All Rights Reserved |
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