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Contents:

• LE BE VICE, OU, L HOMOSEXUELS A LA UR FRANCE (LE RAYON GAY) (FRENCH EDN)
• THE 5 BEST MOSW GAY CLUBS & BARSGAY CLUBS & BARS MOSW
• HISTOIR GAYS (32 RULTS)

LE BE VICE, OU, L HOMOSEXUELS A LA UR FRANCE (LE RAYON GAY) (FRENCH EDN)

I was armed wh two key documents: a letter of troductn om the enomist Nicholas Kaldor to the former French prime mister Pierre Mendès France, and a py of the Spartac Gay Gui for one of the risg stars of French polics the 1930s, Mendès France had been an enomic adviser to the French Prime Mister Léon Blum; he was also the one of the first French policians to have assiated Keyn. I was momentarily enuraged by the fact that my prec gui revealed the ma gay bars to be suated the Rue St Anne, which is only one street away om the Biblthèque natnale where I was sure to spend a lot of time. I prsed the buzzer, and after beg sctized through a small openg I was let and rmed that entry required me to jo an anizatn lled CLESPALA – the myster ials were those of the Club Ltéraire et Scientifique s Pays Lats (Lerary and Scientific Club of the Lat Countri) – and gave one the right to receive a monthly review which proclaimed self the an of the ‘Mouvement Homophile France’.

Subsequent viss I me to experience the oddi of Ardie – the cur but charmg danse du tapis4 or the fact that once a month, on Friday evengs before the dancg started, the Print of the CLESPALA, a middle-aged man lled André Bdry, would mount the stage and lnch to a lecture which he often worked himself up to a enzy of rage directed agast homosexuals whose behavur he nsired disreputable: he seemed particularly to dislike street monstratns, long hair and pk troers. The closed atmosphere of the Rue St Anne was givg way to the more welg bars of the Marais, still Paris's gay village today, but I mt have ntued sometim to vis Ardie sce I still posss my pi of s review for subsequent years. A ltle rearch ma clear that Ardie, found 1954, was one of a number of self-signated ‘homophile’ anizatns found var untri the 1950s to fend the rights of homosexuals – groups like Der Kreis Swzerland, the Mattache Society Ameri, the COC Holland.

Many of them have been wrten about, but not Ardie spe the fact that s longevy and s size – over the years touched the liv of tens of thoands of French homosexuals – make certaly the most important of the anizatns. Sexual Communi, Chigo and London, 1983; Mart Meeker, ‘Behd the Mask: Rensirg the Mattache Society and Male Homophile Practice, 1950s and 1960s’, Journal of the History of Sexualy 10: 1, January 2001, pp.

THE 5 BEST MOSW GAY CLUBS & BARSGAY CLUBS & BARS MOSW

10, not the ‘pnce adémique nom laquelle il vt toujours mix parler du sexe s ang que du sexe s humas’ (the amic pnce whereby the sex of angels is always more worthy of discsn than the sex of humans) the 1990s, when gay history was burgeong North Ameri and Bra, French universalist rhetoric received a shot the arm as beme entwed wh anti-Amerinism and domtic fears about the effects of immigratn on French society. 197– is a strikg illtratn of the stat, until recently, of homosexual history France that when the wrer Didier Eribon, bgrapher of Fouult, anized 1997 France's first ever nference on Gay and Lbian Studi, was not held a universy but at the Centre Pompidou; most of the participants were Amerin, and an article Le Mon exprsed alarm about this llectn of ‘munarian thors and Amerin amics spired by a propagandist spir’ and wishg to ‘subject the universi and lerature to the spir of the ghetto’. A few years ago, when tryg to procure a py of an important new book on homosexual history, I went to look for Gibert Jne, one of the biggt bookshops Paris, and after much uls searchg eventually I found buried a sectn lled ‘société’ ntag a ragbag of books on food, fashn and sex which had no other home.

Although there have been some pneerg French historians of homosexual history, like Mrice Lever, L Buchers Sodome, Paris, 1985, or Michel Rey, ‘Parisian Homosexuals Create a Liftyle 1700–1750: the Police Archiv’, 'Tis Nature's Flt: Unthorised Sexual Behavr durg the Enlightenment, ed. 12 In 1999 the publisher Balland allowed the wrer Guillme Dtan to ed a seri entled ‘Le Rayon gay’ (the pk shelf), but was quickly renamed simply ‘Le rayon’ bee bookshops were not keen to stock . The Amerin historian Gee Chncey has wrten a richly-textured acunt of gay life New York between 1890 and the 1930s – he is now dog the same for the ’50s – which monstrat the variety and vibrancy of homosexual life this perd.

HISTOIR GAYS (32 RULTS)

Perhaps bee I am Brish, and therefore outsi the world of French homosexual activism, and bee I had fortuoly been a member of his anizatn, I was able, havg tablished Bdry was alive, to ga accs to him where no one had succeed before, and through him, to meet many of his former llaborators. The first issue of his magaze, Ardie, appeared January should note at this pot that there had been no prev tradn of homosexual anizatn France, no equivalent of Magn Hirschfeld's Scientific and Humanarian Commtee, found Germany 1897.

The two leadg Paris police chiefs the neteenth century Louis Canler and Félix Carlier were obssed wh the danger reprented by homosexual behavur;19 and so, om the middle of the century, were doctors, most notorly the forensic expert Augt Tardi who wrote extensively about the relatnship between crimaly and homosexualy, claimg to be able to tell om physil signs what kds of sexual practic his subject engaged . 22 The Germy se may not have had the impact of the Eulenberg sndal Germany, but – wh other s like – monstrated that France was no haven of tolerance towards homosexualy at the end of the neteenth century.

For homosexual life Paris durg this perd, see also Régis Reven, Homosexualé et prostutn mascule à Paris 1870–1918, Paris, urse France was also the untry where the two towerg lerary figur of the first half of the century, Prot and Gi, were thors whose work homosexualy occupi nsirable space. 23 As for Prot, although by the end of his work there are few characters who have not revealed themselv as partly homosexual, 24 he distanc his narrator entirely om homosexualy, and his visn of is unremtgly bleak, fluenced by the ia of Karl-Herich Ulrichs (1825–1895) that ‘verts’ are women trapped men's bodi.