louis landerson- france’s own gay liberation

Over the last few years, along with some of the more obnoxious aspects of American culture, several important political ideas have been spreading to France, expanding the realm of traditional politics to what is now called “existential problems.” Gay liberation, like the women’s movement, is among those imported political conceptions.

The FHAR (Front Homosexuel d’Action Révolutionnaire), main organ of gay liberation in Paris, was formed in March 1971 after a group of lesbians and faggots disrupted one of those humdrum radio discussions which just happened to be entitled “Homosexuality, This Painful Problem.” A year and a half before, in September 1970, a group of lesbians had contacted the MLF (French Women’s Liberation Movement), wanting to form a revolutionary lesbian movement. Over a year later they were joined by a small group of faggots and it was this mixed group which carried out the action that generated the FHAR.

Since that time FHAR people have participated in May Day celebrations, Mother’s Day celebrations, picnics at the Tuileries, a demonstration against psychiatrists in San Remo, Italy—pretty much the same kinds of things we’ve been doing here. There have also been rap groups, consciousness-raising groups, guerrilla theatre, and seminars.

The greatest impetus for growth to the FHAR was the April 1971 issue of Tout, which was devoted almost entirely to gay liberation. Tout is a straight, leftist-student-underground newspaper whose director is Jean-Paul Sartre. Shortly after the FHAR was formed, one of the staff members of Tout, who is gay, became involved in gay liberation. He suggested that the FHAR people do some writing. Articles began appearing and the people at Tout were eventually persuaded to let the queers speak. And speak they did.

(Before getting to the gay articles in this, the twelfth, issue of Tout, the reader had to plow through a statement of the editors—who were mostly straight and mostly male. Unfortunately, this statement reduced everything to an “everyone has the right to do his own thing” kind of position. What was important about the statement was that it was the first discussion on the political implications of personal/sexual relations—basically talking about a new awareness coming out of the women’s movement.)

The FHAR articles reflect the lucidity of the French mind, with lots of Marxist and anarchist rhetoric thrown in, and a touch of Marcuse. The main thrust of the articles is anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist, with a sharp critique of the puritan sexuality of French culture. In a statement of purpose, the FHAR claims:

We are against homosexuality as we are against heterosexuality; these are words which take reality only in a socially determined context. It is necessary to destroy this social context so the words will no longer have any meaning. The same goes for relations between men and women, for the family and for the notion of power: we are against whoever presumes to seize power, whatever the ideology