Christophe Broqua & Olivier Fillieule. American Behavioral Scientist. Volume 61, Issue 13. December 2017.
The evolution of the place of sexual minorities in society and the legal advances involved are often perceived or presented as the consequence of mobilizations, the state’s response to social movements’ demands. More rarely is it stressed that, in this domain, movements and the state are both involved in a coproduction of norms, to which other actors, stakeholders in the social definition of desirable forms of sexuality or of conjugality, also contribute. In the same way, while in the most vocal international public discourse on sexual minorities, the state is often envisaged as an adversary against whom one must do battle or on which one must put pressure to prevent it from committing acts of discrimination, referred to as “state homophobia” (Weiss & Bosia, 2013), indeed, “state-sponsored homophobia” (Carroll & Mendos, 2017), here we will demonstrate the opposite. That is, how, in certain countries, the models of sexuality or of conjugality promoted by movements in defense of sexual minorities are, at the same time, a result of choices of the state and consistent with its expectations or interests. More precisely, we will show how, in France, state funding of certain actions taken in the context of the fight against AIDS has contributed to shaping the social and legal forms of contemporary homosexuality. Some works have already been dedicated to demands made by movements for the state to assume responsibility for questions of “LGBT health” (e.g., Epstein, 2003), but none has been interested in the way, stemming from the fight against AIDS, but beyond questions of health, the state has fashioned same-sex politics and coproduced social norms of contemporary homosexuality. State funding will here be viewed less as a factor of transformation of movements, in its effects of acting as a brake on or a facilitator of action by mobilized groups, and more in the way, it has become involved in a process of coproduction of social norms by the state and social movements.
Social Movements and the State
The sociology of contemporary social movements has been largely constructed around a very simplistic vision of relations between movements and the state. For Charles Tilly (1984), the former, above all, promote confrontation with public authorities; this is how they seek to obtain new rights. Thus, he defines the social movement as “a sustained series of interactions between power holders and persons successfully claiming to speak on behalf of a constituency lacking formal representation, in the course of which those persons make publicly visible demands for changes in the distribution or exercise of power, and back those demands with public demonstrations of support” (p. 306). This definition, still very widely used today, has the great merit of avoiding the reification of the social movement, in offering to consider the phenomenon in dynamic terms and to postulate that movements do not follow a predetermined life cycle leading from birth to death, through institutionalization. Nonetheless, it is responsible for a number of blind spots in the literature since it unrealistically opposes the beneficiaries of a system (the elites, those in power, and institutionalized groups) and those who fight them (social movements) (Fillieule & Tartakowsky, 2013).
On one hand, seeing the game in which movements are caught as an exclusive relation with the state is, patently, false. If we can easily agree on the fact that social movements are “by nature” interested in promoting or resisting a change, on the other hand, the type and extent of this change do not always depend on state intervention. Many scholars stress the effects of blindness produced by this central role attributed to institutional politics and, therefore to the state.
The feminist literature and that of gender studies have stressed the need to broaden the concepts of social movements and of activism, by rejecting some common divisions between private and public, political and domestic, resistance and political action. Indeed, the classic definition of the political field is androcentric and, while the preeminence accorded to the state and elites in sociological analyses of mobilizations undeniably reflects the material reality of inequalities of power, at the same time it contributes to an overly hasty exclusion of other areas of social life, such as community, family, family networks, and so on, which are generally dominated by women. These spaces, both “concrete” and social, are often less structured and less visible but still crucial to the emergence and development of contentious politics.
Similarly, in her book on the gay movement in San Francisco, Armstrong (2002) shows how movements attempted to combat cultural standards and institutional approaches in diverse arenas. They did this so effectively, she contends, that an understanding of the movement involves a simultaneous examination of actions within institutional arenas and those in the cultural field, therefore, looking beyond mere opposition to the state. Such a perspective allows her to show that the development of the commercial scene (bars, saunas, etc.) from the start of the 1970s constituted the basis from which sprang the assertion of a gay identity stemming from a series of cultural and political organizations which, in the following years, served to support the liberation movement.
On the other hand, in making a clear-cut distinction between movements and the state, sociologists of social movements have long been unable to see that organizations as individuals comprising movements are very often themselves stakeholders in various state sectors. In fact, the convenient but false distinction between civil society and the state fails to take into account the multiplicity of agencies which comprise the latter or the multipositionality of agents in different social sectors (Fillieule, 1999). Therefore, we must put aside the separation between institutional and noninstitutional groups, elites and challengers, insiders and outsiders (Pettinicchio, 2012; Verhoeven & Duyvendak, 2017). One must also consider the fact that in the literature on social movements, until recently, the state has been perceived as a black box, that is, a homogeneous actor.
On this point, once again, the literature on the feminist movement has contributed a great deal. The development of what is known as “state feminism,” studied, for example, by Katzenstein (1998), has highlighted the interdependence of the American feminist movement and the internal disagreement within different authority systems, including interest groups in the army and within the Catholic Church. The contexts vary in their impact on the movements, depending on their degree of inclusion or exclusion of institutional arenas and, therefore, of dependence on the state. Moreover, what is known as the third feminist wave in the United States, starting from the end of the 1980s, acts less on public authorities, now not very receptive, than on a whole range of cultural institutions, drawing on issues such as conjugal violence and sexual harassment, eating disorders and the female image, denunciation of sexism in advertising, and gender identities, but also the environment, globalization, and so on.
In the case of France, Laure Bereni (2007) has shown how, after the arrival of the left in power in 1981, the women’s movement saw its activists drift away, and lost political and media visibility. The decline of protest activity was accompanied by a greater opening up of the state and of a relative institutionalization of battles. In addition, there was the creation of a Ministry of Women’s Rights which allowed for the cooptation of a certain number of activists by administrative structures. A major consequence was that the tactical repertoire of the movement was radically transformed, as an effect of three related factors: first, to be a valuable spokesperson in front of public authorities who were offering grants and attesting to their representativity, feminist groups united in the type of associations prescribed under the law of 1901 (which governs the status of nonprofit organizations in France); the power relations between these different trends within the movement changed with the marginalization of radical feminism; and this rebalancing encouraged the emergence of moderate causes, with the search for political parity paramount.
This latter example draws attention to another blind spot in the literature. Not only is it too focused on relations between the state and the movement but it concentrates on conflictual relations, without leaving any place for cooperative relations, either all these cases of cooperation or particular situations where the state and a movement cooperate, and the state co-opts the movement and eventually contributes to its institutionalization.
Still in France, the institutionalization of feminism has been based on access to financing from local and national authorities, especially the Ministry of Women’s Rights under the direction of Yvette Roudy, characterized by a major innovation: the granting of an operating budget. With this budget, the minister “strongly encourages the development and institutionalization of a vast network of women’s associations, well beyond political or feminist affinities” (Thébaud, 2001, p. 580). As Anne Revillard (2016) demonstrates, Minister Roudy’s policy consisted of using associations as way stations for public action in offering financing if they fall within the framework of priorities defined by the minister. While this policy elicited a variety of reactions from feminist activists (Dauphin, 2002), it had “major effects on the women’s movement, both at the organizational level and in terms of the activist agenda” (Revillard, 2016, p. 53). Above all, the practice of financing associations was continued and systematized subsequently, thus permitting the consolidation and institutionalization of an entire feminist cluster of interest groups, which has become “dependent on state subsidies” (Dauphin, 2010).
If we turn toward homosexual movements, we observe that most of the literature on the relations of these movements to their environment has been especially interested in the manner in which states, once homosexuality is decriminalized and tolerance toward homosexuals is perceived as a sign of civilization, have supported, promoted, and financed movements in countries which are less developed in terms of human rights (Ayoub, 2016). However, the literature on state support for domestic homosexual movements is rather scanty, with the exception of the case of the Netherlands, in particular, the “Federation of Dutch Associations for Integration of Homosexuality, COC;” a number of scholars have shown how this was a paradigmatic example of institutionalization and cooptation by the state (Davidson, 2015; Duyvendak, 1996; Hekma & Duyvendak, 2011). This is clearly visible if one considers the work of Tremblay, Paternotte, and Johnson (2011) on relations between the lesbian and gay movement and the state, on which most analyses concern policy and legal reforms related to sexual orientation, along with the parliamentary process and judicialization of lesbian and gay politics, leaving aside the question of financing and state support for movements. This article aims to make a contribution on this question.
Same-Sex Politics in the Time of AIDS
For a number of decades, the question of state funding of homosexual movements in France never arose. Arcadie, the first major group in the history of the movement, originally started as a newspaper, founded in 1954, surviving from its sales and owned by its founder André Baudry. In 1957, he created the Club littéraire et scientifique des pays latins (CLESPALA; [Literary and Scientific Club of the Latin Countries]), in the form of a commercial enterprise:
The most obvious solution would have been to establish a public association under the law of 1901, but such associations were vulnerable to prosecution if individuals made complaints against them. Instead Baudry formed the CLESPALA as a private company [Societé à responsabilité limitée, or SARL], launching an appeal to his members to raise the necessary capital to purchase the lease on the Rue Béranger. Initially forty shareholders subscribed, most of whom bought one share at 200,000 old francs (not a huge amount); a handful took up to five shares or more. (Jackson, 2009, p. 92)
A period of what were at first “revolutionary” mobilizations began at the start of the 1970s; then the movement developed according to a twofold approach, political and community service oriented, that continued into the 1980s, during which time it faded away before being reborn in the context of AIDS (Fillieule & Duyvendak, 1999; Pinell, Broqua, de Busscher, Jauffret, & Thiaudière, 2002). Until then, public funding of homosexual movements was very rare, while at the same time, there was the rapid development of commercial establishments which allowed for the financing of certain media (through advertising) or even Gay Pride. The situation changed progressively with the appearance and development of the AIDS epidemic among homosexual men.
AIDS Funding
In what was surely the first French contribution to the analysis of movements fighting AIDS and state responses, Pierre Favre (1992) effectively demonstrated how, in depicting this illness as a public problem, through the application of public policies brought forward by specialized agencies, and the unblocking of funds for associations of the sufferers, the associations mobilized were profoundly transformed into “partners.” This observation was confirmed and further developed in subsequent research on the structuration of the front line of the fight against AIDS, notably with a corresponding opening of new opportunities for more radical groups such as Act Up-Paris (Broqua, 2006; Pinell et al., 2002), but also with a movement to shift leaders of associations toward salaried employment. In offering a “way out” and upward to expert activists, in favoring the creation of more radical associations, the state, therefore, contributed to a lasting change in the social space of the fight against AIDS.
AIDS appeared in 1981, but in France, public authorities started the fight against the epidemic in 1986 with the arrival of the Minister of Health, Michèle Barzach, who, notably, authorized advertising on condoms, allowing for the beginning of explicit campaigns of prevention. In 1987, AIDS was declared a “major national cause.” Yet the first campaigns targeting homosexuals only began, very timidly, in 1989 (Arnal, 1993). That same year, three specific bodies were created by public authorities: the Agence française de lutte contre le sida (AFLS [the French Agency to Combat AIDS]), the Agence nationale de recherches sur le sida (ANRS [the National Agency for AIDS Research]) and the Conseil national du sida (CNS [the National Council on AIDS]). The AFLS was a paragovernmental association responsible, on one hand, for organizing national prevention campaigns and, on the other hand, for allocating public funds for associations’ projects (Paicheler, 2002). It is within this context that, for the first time, homosexual associations received significant funds from French public authorities.
The role played by the AFLS in the history of same-sex politics can be explained by its particular status. As a private body with the status of an association under the law of 1901, fulfilling a mission of public service and with access to public funds, the agency was placed under the administrative supervision of the Ministry of Health and the Direction générale de la santé (DGS [the Executive Management of Health]). This particularity allowed it to recruit individuals from “civil society,” including certain homosexual activists or people living with HIV. Yet it also exposed it to criticisms from associations which perceived it as a rival actor. This was because the agency emerged at a particular point in the history of the epidemic in France, when new associations intended to publicize the experience of living with HIV. One of them in particular, Act Up-Paris, demanded a political approach and argued that the specifically homosexual nature of the epidemic should be recognized, and lead to particular actions in this area (Broqua, 2006).
The existence of the AFLS was short-lived and its management unstable: in 5 years of existence, four different directors led the agency (successively, Dominique Coudreau, Dominique Charvet, Patrick Matet, and Jean de Savigny). The second, Dominique Charvet, a magistrate by profession, left his mark on the agency’s orientations, after a period at its head from the start of 1990 until the end of 1991. At the time of his nomination, a 2-year plan was developed which was harshly received by the associations involved on the ground (Charvet & Durand, 1990; Durand, 1990a, 1990b). Notably, it announced the launching of a call for proposals to finance associations’ plans.
From the time of its creation, the AFLS had brought on board specialized “groups of experts” for target publics, including one dedicated to homosexuals, charged with defining communication strategies adapted to this public. At the outset, this group was composed of four representatives from associations, one media representative and two researchers. It met monthly, starting in January 1990, and lasted the longest of all those established by the agency (Anguenot-Franchequin, 1993). Referring to this group, Dominique Charvet expressed his concern that the actors involved with homosexuals see the agency as legitimate:
One of the agency’s first undertakings was to establish a working group to focus on public communication toward homosexuals. This meant and still means that the action of public authorities would not be in some way imposed to the homosexual community. It must be the result of a debate, of work done in collaboration with reciprocal consideration, first because each partner has as much to learn as to propose, and secondly, and above all, because it would be neither legitimate nor realistic to ask a group to play a role in the prevention of a collective risk if its status and dignity as a full member of the community were not recognized. (Charvet, 1990, p. 64)
The efforts by the AFLS were progressively noted by some of the activists (Arnal, 1990). Starting in 1991, Dominique Charvet declared that his budget included a line for “homosexuality,” with the sum of 5 million francs allocated to this. Parisian associations got together as a collective to better make their voice heard. Some were more used than others to responding to the administrative constraints that being the beneficiary of public funds entails. This was the case of Santé et Plaisir Gai (SPG [Gay Health and Pleasure]), which sprang from a split with AIDES, the principal French association in the fight against AIDS, created in 1984. SPG, which was in some ways the first homosexual association in the fight against AIDS, began in 1988 to organize preventive actions in the gay milieu, notably through “jack-off parties.” While its president, Gérard Pelé, expressed positions critical of the agency in 1990 (Durand, 1990a), SPG progressively drew closer to it, especially due to certain particular skills which it possessed:
SPG seems particularly adept at responding to the agency’s requirements during calls for proposals and during the submission of reports at the end of the contract. This situation is that much more remarkable given that it contrasted with that of other homosexual associations, unused to developing a response to a call for proposals, the management of public money or the writing of a report (a point which was emphasized in Yves Charfe’s report on prevention in the gay milieu in France; Charfe, 1992). (de Busscher, 1996, p. 37)
As a sign of its strategy of working more closely with homosexual movements, the AFLS integrated some activists into its core group of members; thus, Gérard Pelé rejoined the Agency in 1991. Yet it was also very strongly criticized by certain groups, in particular, Act Up-Paris, which, at the time, was the only one to adhere to the principle of accepting funds neither by public authorities, nor by pharmaceutical laboratories. The confrontation between the association and the agency allowed them to legitimize themselves reciprocally in a space where they still had to obtain recognition from the other actors involved. This competition grew as the agency progressively expressed positions on homosexuality that were close to those of activists.
Dominique Charvet, who, in the eyes of various actors, epitomized a certain evolution of the AFLS, developed a relatively profound reflection on homosexuality and its links to AIDS. He left his mark on the agency and this lasted after his departure at the end of 1991, since, for example, the agency organized in 1992 a conference bringing together researchers, actors on the ground, and public authorities, to take stock of actions affecting homosexuals and to develop future perspectives.
The criticisms of Act Up-Paris were not the only challenges faced by the AFLS: a damning report from the Cour des comptes [Court of Auditors] was published in 1993 on the management of its finances. At the end of 1994, following the dissolution of the agency, which had been recommended by Professor Luc Montagnier in a report submitted to the prime minister, the DGS continued the campaigns of prevention in France, while the DDASS (Directions Départementales des Affaires Sanitaires and Sociales [Departmental Management of Health and Social Affairs]) were tasked with the responsibility of local financing of preventive actions led by organizations on the ground. Thus, the core personnel from the agency were incorporated into the AIDS Division of the DGS, which allowed for a certain continuity in the policy and ideological work accomplished.
Now, we turn to the approach to financing and the policy orientation of the AFLS on the subject of homosexuality which developed along two lines in particular: the creation of spaces for homosexual socialization; and the project for legal recognition of same-sex couples (Pinell et al., 2002).
The Socialization of Men Who Have Sex with Men
At the end of the 1980s and the start of the 1990s, in those French environments, the idea that male homosexuals’ battle against AIDS must occur simultaneously through the improvement of their place in society and the fashioning of their identity began to dominate. This idea was shared, for example, by certain activists, the director of the AFLS, Dominique Charvet, and some researchers. Thus, the sociologists Michael Pollak and Marie-Ange Schiltz, commenting on the results of the regular quantitative investigation they conducted on male homosexual and bisexual readers of the gay press (the so-called “gay press inquiry”), wrote: “The instructions for safer sex are that much better followed when there exists a feeling of belonging to a gay community, which explains why younger men, workers and provincial gays lag behind” (Pollak & Schiltz, 1991, p. 59).
This conception distinguishes between inside and outside the gay community or, at a minimum, a center and a periphery. The community affiliation is considered desirable to permit the integration of standards of health for intergenerational transmission and, consequently, this was supported by the AFLS:
The homosexual milieu has its associations, its meeting places, its commercial network, but, outside of the big cities, these do not reach enough people. ( … ) This poses the problem of maintaining the attitudes of prevention amongst older people; transmitting the knowledge from the older ones to those younger is delicate, given the difficult social situation of homosexuality. Outside of specific homosexual places, society does not help to transmit this knowledge, as it does for other situations where we talk about it, where all of society naturally conveys the message. This is why the visibility of homosexuality must be an objective, not of tolerance but of democracy. (Charvet & Le Bitoux, 1991, pp. 28-29)
In this extract, we clearly see the link made between the imperatives of prevention and the social place of homosexuality. Thus, the AFLS provided financial support to two types of initiatives aiming to permit the socialization of homosexuals and, more precisely, of those situated on the margins of homosexual identity (de Busscher, 2003; de Busscher & Broqua, 1998; Pinell et al., 2002). As Dominique Charvet declared, “in both the area of homosexuality and that of AIDS, it is a matter of creating collective identities” (Charvet & Le Bitoux, 1991, p. 29). The initial initiative was the creation of a Maison des homosexualités [House of Homosexualities] in Paris in 1991, which became the Centre gai et lesbien [the Gay and Lesbian Center]. An old project dating from the 1980s, its establishment only became possible with the support of the agency:
We immediately helped the Maison des homosexualités, considering that it was perhaps the foundation of a collective action, relatively consensual, including all those who may want to benefit or help, and this collective tool will only improve if the surrounding milieu feeds it with relevant information, and intelligence, as a place to reaffirm one’s identity. The strength of the impact of AIDS has relativized the social perception of homosexuality, even though it exists, and this demand cannot move forward if it is not discussed. The Maison represents the first step towards its birth, the rebirth of a collective will of homosexual organizations, with collective reference points. (Charvet & Le Bitoux, 1991, p. 30, italics added)
The objective was to offer an organization the means to receive individuals who will be able to be socialized as homosexuals and have access to prevention standards, the diffusion of which could benefit networks of established relationships. Equivalent structures then also appeared in certain provincial cities thanks to AIDS-related public funding.
A second form of intervention concerns associations of young homosexuals. The AFLS saw there ideal spaces for homosexual socialization and reinforcement of the homosexual identity among individuals whose identity is still developing. Not only did the agency choose to support them but it even decided to bring them together and, to that end, created the GEMINI federation to provide its support to young gay and lesbian associations created throughout France.
The objective is clear: it is a matter of “capturing” the young at the point when they are asking themselves questions about their sexual orientation, in offering a way station to facilitate their integration into the “gay community,” and, thus, make them more amenable to prevention standards. (de Busscher, 2003, p. 262)
Therefore, with this support, the AFLS intended to favor institutionalization and the normalization of homosexuality, with the goal of fighting AIDS. Its desire to contribute to the transformation of social norms of sexuality and conjugality was also apparent in the question of legal recognition of same-sex couples.
The Legal Recognition of Same-Sex Couples
During the presentation of a paper in 1991, Dominique Charvet set forth the policy applied by the AFLS and, through it, by the French state. In the fourth section, “Promote solidarity” the last point presented was titled “Accept modifications which go much further than the illness and that concern overall prevention,” which Dominique Charvet presented as follows:
Doubtless, this is the most ambitious and demanding objective. Simple recognition and acceptance of the illness are not considered sufficient; this involves going further in agreeing each time to reflect on social practices which might play a role in the course of the epidemic. In this respect, the status of homosexuality in France is an example. The multiple partnerships which sometimes characterize homosexual behavior—without being unique to homosexuals—are merely the mode of expression of an oppressed affectivity which cannot in our society find fulfillment in a conventional lifestyle. To allow homosexuals to express their affections otherwise than in the “compulsive” multiple partnerships, they must be helped and, here, legal rules play a crucial role in enabling them to express their sexuality in social life. This is why legislators presented a bill to create a “civil partnership” which did not claim to be a homosexual marriage but rather a legal structure allowing companions to register their emotional life, like their material interests, for the duration. (Charvet, 1991)
There too, the AFLS was not alone in maintaining this position, but it was one of the first to do so from “within” the state, at a time when the opinion of those interested in the subject was in the process of changing. After the result of the “gay press inquiry” on the question “Do you expect the government to consider the dossiers on homosexuals’ social situation important?” the percentage of those who indicated an “acceptance of cohabitation (partnership)” rose from 40% in 1987 to 62% in 1990. More generally, the authors note the following:
The themes which bring together homosexuals after a decade of the epidemic are very different from those of the 1970s. It is no longer merely a matter of the right to make love with the partner of one’s choice, but of the extension of access to the same civil rights as the sexual majority. (Pollak & Schiltz, 1991, p. 62)
While homosexual movements’ demand for legal recognition of same-sex couples preceded the appearance of AIDS, it only began to be heard once men faced the tragic experience of exclusion by families of their deceased partners. Developed in embryonic form at the end of the 1970s, this demand was picked up again and elaborated on at the end of the 1980s by several homosexual groups close to existing political parties. Yet it was only at the start of the 1990s that it gained momentum when its promoters could make the case against intolerable situations of exclusion experienced by partners of homosexuals who had died of AIDS; the public authorities listened to this proposal for the first time on the basis of this argument. Starting in 1995, AIDES joined the battle and was increasingly imitated in the years that followed by the main homosexual groups or those involved in the fight against AIDS. Consequently, initially brought forward by homosexual activists close to political parties, it became one of the issues in the fight against AIDS in the 1990s (de Busscher & Thiaudière, 2000).
Thus, the collaboration of homosexual movements and some legislators gave rise to the coproduction of a bill to legally recognize same-sex couples, which ended with the adoption of the “Pacte civil de solidarité” (PaCS [the Civil Pact of Solidarity]) in 1999. Fourteen years later, in 2013, the marriage of individuals of the same sex became legal in France.
Discussion: Homosexuality and the State
The example of the AFLS and same-sex politics in France contributes to a reflection on relations between the state and social movements and on the role of state funding. While singular and apparently historically circumscribed, this case illustrates certain more general processes of state involvement in the social definition of homosexuality in France, a process certainly present in other countries but neglected in the literature.
The first lesson that one can draw from the history of the AFLS and same-sex policies and politics in the 1990s concerns the heterogeneity of agents who comprise the state. In retrospect, the agency seems to have been truly quite unique in its role in the story of the fight against AIDS in France. Its form of association and the fact that its agents principally came from “civil society “ made it, from its inception, an actor positioned at the interface of the state and the world of associations. In some ways, its creation reduced the autonomy of the state in bringing it closer to the forces mobilized against AIDS. Many associations in the battle against AIDS had ambivalent relations with the agency, perceiving it both as a competitor and as a partner to be handled with care due to the financial support that was its mission to provide. Its field of action broadened quite rapidly to homosexual issues and, subsequently, homosexual associations. At first, various actors expressed a certain resistance toward it, but this diminished when it started to inspire confidence, notably due to its integration of individuals considered competent or committed to these questions, some of them homosexuals and/or living with HIV. Its history is also an illustration that social movements are not always positioned outside the state, that there are relations with rival organizations, thus, sometimes a closeness of the state with the movements, a phenomenon already described in the literature on the subject of “inside activists” (Pettinicchio, 2012) or “governmental activism” (Verhoeven & Duyvendak, 2017).
Yet another lesson, contrary to what occurred in the history of French feminism, is that financing by the state and the institutionalization of movements did not provoke a sidelining of the radical element, quite the contrary. The fact that the association Act Up-Paris was extremely critical of the AFLS, to the point of organizing an action, unanimously denounced as violent, against Dominique Charvet in April 1991, when he was starting to become popular among those fighting against AIDS and among homosexual movements, exactly corresponds to the particular position of the agency, Act Up-Paris explaining that it preferred to choose to take on “weak links,” here an actor from the state who was in its sights. Its actions created a polarization of the movement of the fight against AIDS and homosexual movements. The most criticized actions of Act Up-Paris were those against the agency, each time generating a sort of unanimity against the activist group. As the agents comprising the state were diverse, the reactions to these same agents of the state could also be, ranging from collaboration to conflict. From the history of the fight against AIDS in France and, in particular, that of the AFLS, the main impression is generally one of conflict, notably around the actions of Act Up-Paris, but also, as we have seen here, from another angle, it is revealing in terms of most associations’ collaboration with, even dependence, on the agency.
Nonetheless, if a form of financial dependence was established between the AFLS (and then the state services which took up the torch after it) and some homosexual movements, it was neither exclusive nor reflective of a cause and effect relationship between state funding and same-sex politics. French history shows us that the question of financing must be seen within a broader context. State funding is only one part of the financing of same-sex politics. There are other sources which might have significant effects on the movement. For example, in the domain of the press, the monthly Têtu, the principal gay magazine in France from 1995 on, owed its existence to the financial support of businessman Pierre Bergé, the partner of Yves Saint-Laurent until his death, who partially dictated the magazine’s editorial line, at the same time as he financed other homosexual groups. Simultaneously, the varied sources of financing were themselves part of an even broader range of elements which influenced same-sex politics, such as, for example, legal reforms, as we have seen in the case of laws on same-sex couples. In fact, same-sex politics must be seen as spilling over into social movements in the narrow sense (organized groups), to encompass, for example, the commercial subculture, and community media, as well as certain components of the state.
Although we start with the historical sequence, which we have chosen to display, because it is in some ways the cornerstone of an approach to collaboration between the state and homosexual movements still at play today, we are not arguing that state actors are preeminent. The same-sex politics financed by the state through the AFLS were not all driven by the state, but they were supported in matters related to its plan to transform the place of homosexuals in society. In the first case discussed (the socialization of men who have sex with men), the action of the agency aimed to produce an effect, which was finally attained, of structuring and institutionalizing the movement. In the second case (the legal recognition of same-sex couples), there was no financing as such but rather an ideological support which contributed to creating the space of the battle against AIDS, both within and outside of the state, the new flag carrier of the project, since it would be AIDES which would carry the torch after the failure of attempts at the start of the decade by homosexual associations close to political parties.
The comparison with the history of feminism allows us once again to clarify the role played by the state in the issues which concern us. There has never been the equivalent of “state feminism” in France for homosexuality, since the French state has never engaged in similar work of defending homosexuals. Therefore, we cannot speak of “state homosexualism.” However, we can speak of “state homosexuality” in the sense where the dominant model of homosexuality in contemporary France, for a quarter of a century, was validated by the state and conforms to its expectations. Contrary to homosexual movements, the state was not aiming for the social recognition of sexual minorities. One could even say that it was always sensitive on this point. One of the main criticisms of the AFLS was that it did not want to clearly display homosexuals in prevention campaigns addressed to the general public. This was true even after the dissolution of the agency; the one at the DGS responsible for prevention among homosexuals could still declare in the mid-1990s that one had to be careful not to “preach.” Similarly, for a long time, the state was not very involved in the fight against homophobia. (Moreover, this word only gained legitimacy in the public debate at the end of the 1990s.) The state’s objective was, rather, support for and government of particular “populations.” The aim in financing actions within the context of the fight against AIDS, and then of that for equal rights, was the regulation of behavior. When the AFLS worked in the direction of normalizing homosexuality, it was both to standardize and to regulate it. The objective was to define the contours of a population which could be clearly demarcated (while from the perspective of both behavior and identities, many studies have shown the fluidity of sexual orientation categories), which was of interest in terms of the public health plan, but also, more broadly, in terms of control and social order.
Conclusion: Sexual Democracy and State Homosexuality
Nothing better displays the utility for the French state of the existence of a homosexual category, visible and somewhat recognized from the legal perspective, than the issues surrounding “sexual democracy,” which consists of raising to the rank of a democratic principle the respect for certain rules relative to sexual questions, in particular, equality of the sexes and of sexualities (Fassin, 2006). This is one of the forms of “sexual nationalism”(Jaunait, Le Renard, & Marteu, 2013) observable in numerous countries: today, sexual questions serve to draw borders between oneself and others, in a context where causes related to sexuality are now international (Broqua, Fillieule, & Roca i Escoda, 2016). This results in the circulation/imposition of standards which become a political arm in the hands of states, either under cover of promoting equal rights (for Western countries, including the United States, a key priority), or to combat what was denounced as a form of cultural colonization and imperialism. Even if, in France, certain representatives of the nation continue to express positions hostile to equal rights, indeed to sexual minorities, the state’s ability to take advantage of a principle of “sexual democracy” has been valuable in terms of both domestic and international policies, allowing it to occasionally delegitimize certain populations or social groups, indeed, certain states. For example, we can recall the French president Nicolas Sarkozy who, although not having respected his own promises to improve the status of same-sex partners, demanded the liberation of homosexuals imprisoned in Senegal, the same country where he had given a speech saying that “the African man has not fully entered into history.” Even representatives of the Front National, the principal party of the extreme right in France, declare the necessity of respect for women and homosexuals when there are issues relating to postcolonial or Muslim immigration. These positions on French territory or in foreign lands by French diplomats, expressing concern about the fate of homosexuals in countries where they are not secure, or allocating them the status of refugees as long as they can prove their sexual orientation (Fassin & Salcedo, 2015), would not have reached a minimal consensus around the existence of a category recognized and coproduced by the state, had there not already been the construction of a homosexuality consistent with state expectations, in other words, a “state homosexuality.”