The corridors of the courts will no longer hold any secrets for Eric Zemmour. The president of “Reconquest! » was fined 4,000 euros for homophobic insults on Thursday. “We are immediately appealing this decision,” declared his lawyer, Me Olivier Pardo.
The Stop Homophobia association had filed a complaint against comments made by Eric Zemmour on October 15, 2019, in the program “Face à l’info” hosted by Christine Kelly. The program that day was titled: “Medically assisted procreation: progress? », after the adoption at first reading in the Assembly of a bill providing in particular for the extension of PMA to female couples and single women.
Whims “
Eric Zemmour notably declared: “We have the whims of a small minority which holds its hands on the State and which enslaves it for its own benefit and which will first disintegrate society, because we are going to have children without a father and I have just told you that it is a catastrophe and, secondly, who will make all the other French people pay for his whims.”
After a formal notice from the CSA, the replay of the show was deleted from the channel’s website at the end of November 2019. The case was debated on May 15, 2023 and the press chamber of the Paris court rendered its decision THURSDAY.
“Outrageous dimension”
“The comments are contemptuous of the people they target, who see their desire for a child reduced to a selfish “whim” and even take on an outrageous dimension when it is attributed to them, to satisfy it, to have recourse to the subjugation of the state apparatus,” judges the court. “In this, homosexual people find themselves disqualified in the eyes of the public for who they are, their sexual orientation necessarily inducing, according to the defendant, behavior contrary to the general interest,” adds the decision.
The publishing director, Serge Nedjar, was fined 4,000 euros, 2,000 of which were suspended. They were ordered to pay jointly to the civil party associations, Stop Homophobia, Adheos and Mousse, a total of 3,000 euros in damages and 2,000 euros in legal fees.