Jean Diot and Bruno Lenoir were two French men arrested and charged with the crime of homosexuality in Paris in 1750. They were the last persons executed in France as punishment for homosexuality. In 2014, Paris officials installed a memorial plaque at the site of their arrest.
Late at night on 4 January 1750, a city watchman happened upon two men engaged in sex on the rue Montorgueil. The men were Jean Diot, 40 years old, who worked in a charcuterie close to the rue Montorgueil, and Bruno Lenoir, 23, a cordwainer in the neighborhood. The watchman had them arrested and imprisoned. The indictment said they were behaving "in an indecent and reprehensible manner". After a few days, Lenoir explained that Diot approached him and suggested sex, that he agreed, but they were interrupted by the city watchman. [1] One magistrate described the charges against them as "committing crimes which propriety does not permit us to describe in writing". [2]
Their trial began on 11 April 1750. They were condemned to death on 27 May. They were taken to the place de Grève, the customary place for executions, on 6 July 1750. [1] Their crime was not announced to the assembled crowd. [2] Then at 5 pm they were strangled and burned to death. [1] Edmond Barbier (1689–1771) noted in his journal that the delay in carrying out the sentence made him think it had been commuted. In his view, it was better not to draw attention to this behavior with public punishments "which indeed teach the young what they know nothing about". [2]
They were the last people known to undergo capital punishment in France for the crime of homosexuality. The severity of their sentence was atypical of the period, when the repression of homosexuality was growing less strict. [1] In the rare case of an execution of someone charged with homosexual behavior, he was convicted of other serious crimes, such as murder or rape. [3] More typically, arrests for homosexual behavior resulted in a few days of detention and a reprimand, but the case of Diot and Lenoir came at a time when authorities needed to make a dramatic statement against homosexuality and their lower class origins made them suitable candidates. [1] [4] As Barbier wrote: "These two workmen had no connection with persons of distinction, either at Court or in the city, and since they have apparently not named anyone [of rank], this example was made with no further consequences." [2]
France ended the criminalization of sex between consenting adults in 1791. [1]
The Council of Paris, meeting on 16 and 17 May 2011, agreed that Paris would pay homage to Lenoir and Diot. The city's Department of Cultural Affairs determined to express the council's wish with a memorial plaque, chose a location, and developed its text. [5]
On 18 October 2014, where the rue Montorgueil crosses the rue Bachaumont, a memorial plaque set in the pavement to note the events of 1750 was inaugurated. The text, as authorized by the city's Department of Cultural Affairs, reads: [5]
On 4 January 1750, on the rue Montorgueil between the rue Saint-Sauveur and the old rue Beaurepaire, [lower-alpha 1] Bruno Lenoir and Jean Diot were arrested. Charged with homosexuality, they were burned at the place de Grève on 6 July 1750. This was the last execution for homosexuality in France. (punctuation added)
Anne Hidalgo, Mayor of Paris, tweeted two images of the unveiling ceremony with the caption "Homage to Bruno Lenoir & Jean Diot, last couple executed for being homosexual". [6]
In the summer of 2018, when Paris hosted the Gay Games, the plaque was tagged and vandalized twice. [7] A man who claimed credit for one instance claimed to be gay and to hate everything LGBTQ. He was known to the police for making threatening phone calls and associated with the political opposition to same-sex marriage. [8]
The Paris massacre of 1961 was the mass killing of Algerians who were living in Paris by the French National Police. It occurred on 17 October 1961, during the Algerian War (1954–62). Under orders from the head of the Parisian police, Maurice Papon, the National Police attacked a demonstration by 30,000 pro-National Liberation Front (FLN) Algerians. After 37 years of denial and censorship of the press, in 1998 the government finally acknowledged 40 deaths, while some historians estimate that between 200 and 300 Algerians died. Death was due to heavy-handed beating by the police, as well as mass drownings, as police officers threw demonstrators into the river Seine.
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBTQ) people in Iran face severe challenges not experienced by non-LGBTQ residents. Sexual activity between members of the same sex is illegal and can be punishable by death, and people can legally change their assigned sex only through sex reassignment surgery. Currently, Iran is the only country confirmed to execute gay people, though death penalty for homosexuality might be enacted in Afghanistan.
Missak Manouchian was an Armenian poet and communist activist. A survivor of the 1915–1916 Armenian genocide, he moved to France from an orphanage in Lebanon in 1925. He was active in communist Armenian literary circles. During World War II, he became the military commissioner of FTP-MOI, a group consisting of European immigrants, including many Jews, in the Paris Region which carried out assassinations and bombings of Nazi targets. According to one author, the Manouchian group was the most active one of the French Resistance. Manouchian and many of his comrades were arrested in November 1943 and executed by the Nazis at Fort Mont-Valérien on 21 February 1944. He is considered a hero of the French Resistance and was entombed in the Panthéon in Paris.
Capital punishment in France is banned by Article 66-1 of the Constitution of the French Republic, voted as a constitutional amendment by the Congress of the French Parliament on 19 February 2007 and simply stating "No one can be sentenced to the death penalty". The death penalty was already declared illegal on 9 October 1981 when President François Mitterrand signed a law prohibiting the judicial system from using it and commuting the sentences of the seven people on death row to life imprisonment. The last execution took place by guillotine, being the main legal method since the French Revolution; Hamida Djandoubi, a Tunisian citizen convicted of torture and murder on French soil, was put to death in September 1977 in Marseille.
Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people in the United Arab Emirates face discrimination and legal challenges. Homosexuality is illegal in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and under the federal criminal provisions, consensual same-sex sexual activity is punishable by imprisonment; extra-marital sexual activity between persons of different sexes is also illegal. In both cases, prosecution will only be brought if a husband or male guardian of one of the participants makes a criminal complaint. The penalty is a minimum of six months imprisonment; no maximum penalty is prescribed, and the court has full discretion to impose any sentence in accordance with the country's constitution.
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) rights in France are some of the most progressive by world standards. Although same-sex sexual activity was a capital crime that often resulted in the death penalty during the Ancien Régime, all sodomy laws were repealed in 1791 during the French Revolution. However, a lesser-known indecent exposure law that often targeted LGBT people was introduced in 1960, before being repealed in 1980.
For logistical reasons in 2008, the Evangelical Lutheran Church - Synod of France and Belgium divided into two separate synods: the Evangelical Lutheran Church - Synod of France, and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Belgium,. Both are confessional Lutheran church bodies in France and in Belgium respectively. Over a dozen parishes belong to the two synods.
Prostitution in France was legal until April 2016, but several surrounding activities were illegal, like operating a brothel, living off the avails (pimping), and paying for sex with someone under the age of 18.
Rue du Bac is a street in Paris situated in the 7th arrondissement. The street, which is 1150 m long, begins at the junction of the quais Voltaire and Anatole-France and ends at the rue de Sèvres.
Ana María "Anne" Hidalgo Aleu is a Spanish-French politician who has been the Mayor of Paris since 2014, the first woman to hold the office. She is a member of the Socialist Party.
The Carlingue were French auxiliaries who worked for the Gestapo, Sicherheitsdienst and Geheime Feldpolizei during the German occupation of France in the Second World War.
The Rue du Bât-d'Argent is an old street which crosses perpendicularly a part of the Presqu'île quarter in the 1st arrondissement of Lyon. It begins at the rue Édouard-Herriot, in continuation of the rue du Plâtre, crosses the rue de la République and the rue du Garet, and ends on the Quai Jean Moulin. The street is famous for its college, the Collège-lycée Ampère.
Paris, the capital of France, has an active LGBTQ community. In the 1990s, 46% of the country's gay men lived in the city. As of 2004, Paris had 140 LGBT bars, clubs, hotels, restaurants, shops, and other commercial businesses. Florence Tamagne, author of "Paris: 'Resting on its Laurels'?", wrote that there is a "Gaité parisienne"; she added that Paris "competes with Berlin for the title of LGBT capital of Europe, and ranks only second behind New York for the title of LGBT capital of the world." It has France's only gayborhoods that are officially organized.
Louis Henri Nicot was a French sculptor.
Pierre Lenoir was a French sculptor.
Alfred Lindon was a Polish jeweller from a poor Jewish background who became an expert on pearls. He married into the Citroën family and built an important collection of modern art that was looted by the Nazis in occupied Paris during the Second World War. He lived to see some of his paintings returned, although others were returned to his heirs after his death.
Jean Le Bitoux was a French journalist and gay activist. He was the founder of Gai pied, the first mainstream gay magazine in France. He was a campaigner for Holocaust remembrance of homosexual victims. He was the author of several books about homosexuality.
The history of prostitution in France has similarities with the history of prostitution in other countries in Europe, namely a succession of periods of tolerance and repression, but with certain distinct features such as a relatively long period of tolerance of brothels.
The Rue Mosnier with Flags is an 1878 oil on canvas painting by Édouard Manet, showing the eponymous Parisian street, decorated with French flags for the first national holiday on 30 June 1878, the Fête de la Paix. The Fête de la Paix was held during that year's Exposition Universelle, which together marked France's recovery after the Franco-Prussian War and the Paris Commune. The holiday was moved to 14 July in 1880 to become Bastille Day. The painting is held by the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles.