“I was mistaken. If it had to be done again, I would vote for the text of the marriage for all” said the Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin in an interview given to the daily The voice of the North Friday, April 20, where he also announced several measures to strengthen the fight against homophobic attacks.
In 2013, when he was mayor of Tourcoing (North), Gérald Darmanin had firmly declared that he would not marry same-sex couples in his town hall. In 2017, only a few hours after his appointment during the first five-year term of Emmanuel Macron, Internet users unearthed several tweets from the minister who fiercely opposed marriage between same-sex couples.
“Ten years later, I was able to see that same-sex marriage, like adoption by homosexual couples, does not change anything and that the fears that had been exposed by the right, and in particular in my political family, were unfounded”he confided to the regional daily. “The important thing is the development of the child and the love carried by the parents, whatever the family structure: homosexual, heterosexual or single parent”he defends.
Sensitize the police
In his interview, Gérald Darmanin observes that according to “the only figures from the national police (excluding the police prefecture and the national gendarmerie)”there was in 2022 “a 10% increase in offenses related to the sexual orientation of the victim”. To remedy this, he announces that a series of measures will be implemented, such as the training of police and gendarmes “already in place”while “Since this year, 100% of police and gendarmes have had a module on violence against LGBT people in their training”. He thus asserts “give yourself a year” so that “all police and gendarmes spend at least a day or half a day understanding that there are specific qualifications in the law and that it is necessary to be able to support the victims”.
A day of awareness is not the only objective of the Minister of the Interior. The latter explains that he wants “install referrers everywhere”on the model of Paris, Bordeaux, Marseille and Cayenne, where “we put an LGBT referent in the services, that is to say a police officer or a gendarme who is specialized, trained, who advises his comrades”. It ensures that the establishment of a referent “works very well”and announces that he is going “take an instruction next season to generalize this in each of the police stations and in each of the gendarmerie brigades”.
It will also be about “map the places where there is the most violence against LGBT people” to be “more present via a video protection policy”, “more national police at certain times”but also “links with the owners of bars and discotheques who can provide information to intervene”.