My speech in Vilnius (in English)
Vilnius - 7th 2010
Ladies and gentlemen,
I would like to ask you a question, just a simple question : is the homosexual a danger, a troublemaker, a threat to public order, a sick person who needs to be treated, a psychologically deranged person ? Should he be treated as a criminal or as a sick person? Should he be locked up to avoid any spreading of what was called in the 19th century by some people “the abominable vice of the Greeks” ?
I am asking this question to provoke, to provoke you, who are gathered here because of an unrelenting humanist will to fight against discriminations which are linked to homophobia, but mainly to remind you of something fundamental : these questions sound absurd and the answer should be totally clear to absolutely everybody.
Unfortunately, and often dramatically, what I just told you does not match reality : more than 70 countries in the world apply laws which criminalize sexual relationships between consenting adults of the same sex. Even worse, in more than 10 countries, homosexuality is punished by death. These problems have only been resolved in France recently. Till 1982 homosexuality was partly considered to be a felony in France. Let us remind ourselves that it is only in 1991 - less than 20 years - that the WHO (World Health Organisation) removed homosexuality from the list of mental diseases.







