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The new prime minister is a political boy wonder, a media marvel with dazzling looks, rat-a-tat debating skills and immense ambition. Those attributes have contributed to his status as the country’s most popular politician, albeit with an approval rating of just 40 percent, probably reflecting the unpopularity of his patron, Macron, who elevated him to the premiership.
Other gay or bisexual politicians lead or have led European governments, including in Ireland, Belgium, Luxembourg, Iceland and Serbia. Macron’s own cabinet includes several LGBTQ+ members; a noted gay activist, Sébastien Chenu, is vice president of the National Assembly and a top lieutenant to French far-right leader Marine Le Pen. Same-sex marriage in France was legalized in 2013, two years before the Supreme Court allowed it in the United States.
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Still, in Attal’s case, the Gallic shrug carries a tinge of cluelessness. Homophobia has been retreating in France for years, but it’s not dead.
A socialist former mayor of Paris, Bertrand Delanoë, is openly gay, and his openness helped propel his political ascent. Yet it’s also true that when he was mayor, from 2001 to 2014, some French snickered at him as “Notre Dame de Paris.”
On Tuesday, when Attal’s appointment was announced, Frédéric Martel, a French radio host who is the author of “In the Closet of the Vatican” and other books on LGBTQ+ issues, hailed the choice on X, formerly Twitter, as a previously unimaginable “symbolic victory” for the LGBTQ+ community. His post was met with a barrage of homophobic replies.
“In France, many people feel like it’s just a private matter, but I don’t believe that,” Martel, who is gay, told me. “Attal is prime minister, he is openly gay, and that’s important. For a lot of people of my generation, having a gay prime minister is just unbelievable. And he will make history forever for it — that’s just a fact.”
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A separate question is what Attal will do with that fact — specifically, whether he will try to use it to advocate for LGBTQ+ rights.
Attal, who has served as education minister for the past six months, replaces a stern technocrat, Élisabeth Borne, who had vastly more administrative experience when Macron named her to the job in 2022. “I want to dedicate my nomination to all little girls and tell them to go all the way in pursuing your dreams,” she said at her inauguration.
Attal has spoken frankly about his own travails as a young gay person, including suffering online abuse as a teenager and being outed by a former classmate in 2018. But he has given no indication that he will follow Borne’s example in offering himself as a role model, despite the risks of bullying and harassment faced by LGBTQ+ boys and girls.
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As education minister, for instance, he appeared reluctant to press for an investigation into the death of a teenage boy who killed himself a year ago after experiencing anti-gay bullying at his school in the Vosges region of eastern France, according to French media reports.
Attal was more proactive in deciding, weeks after taking over the ministry, to ban Muslim schoolgirls from wearing the long, flowing robes called abayas. That was broadly popular and in line with French views of secularism at public schools, where Christian crucifixes are also prohibited. But it also signaled that Attal is unlikely to champion minority rights.
It is his prerogative, and Macron’s as president, to set the French government’s agenda. Both men are pragmatists; for both, a priority will be the sorry state of France’s understaffed, underresourced schools, as well as its underpaid teachers. Education, Attal said in his inaugural speech as prime minister, is “the mother of all our battles.”
As for the battles he faced as a gay person in his youth, he seems to have left those in the past.
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PARIS — This week, France became the world’s most important country with an openly gay head of government. The French didn’t want to talk about it.
French media trumpeted the fact that Gabriel Attal is the country’s youngest-ever prime minister; at age 34, his youth and hypersonic ascent as President Emmanuel Macron’s protégé are no doubt remarkable.
Yet most news coverage in France mentioned the fact of Attal’s sexual orientation only in passing, or omitted it altogether, until some journalists noticed it had made headlines elsewhere, especially in the United States. That stirred some belated commentary, including a headline on the news site Mediapart: “The prime minister is gay, but not too much.”
That captured France’s default attitude toward sexuality, which is widely regarded as private, but also best not hidden in the case of public figures. Attal has skillfully walked that tightrope, known in France as “le droit à l’indifférence,” which translates roughly as the right to be different — but also to have that difference ignored.
So it was nearly ignored, but not quite, when the cabinet shake-up two days after Attal’s appointment included a new foreign minister, Stéphane Séjourné, who is the prime minister’s former romantic partner. The French press immediately ascertained that their relationship had ended two years ago.
The new prime minister is a political boy wonder, a media marvel with dazzling looks, rat-a-tat debating skills and immense ambition. Those attributes have contributed to his status as the country’s most popular politician, albeit with an approval rating of just 40 percent, probably reflecting the unpopularity of his patron, Macron, who elevated him to the premiership.
Other gay or bisexual politicians lead or have led European governments, including in Ireland, Belgium, Luxembourg, Iceland and Serbia. Macron’s own cabinet includes several LGBTQ+ members; a noted gay activist, Sébastien Chenu, is vice president of the National Assembly and a top lieutenant to French far-right leader Marine Le Pen. Same-sex marriage in France was legalized in 2013, two years before the Supreme Court allowed it in the United States.
Still, in Attal’s case, the Gallic shrug carries a tinge of cluelessness. Homophobia has been retreating in France for years, but it’s not dead.
A socialist former mayor of Paris, Bertrand Delanoë, is openly gay, and his openness helped propel his political ascent. Yet it’s also true that when he was mayor, from 2001 to 2014, some French snickered at him as “Notre Dame de Paris.”
On Tuesday, when Attal’s appointment was announced, Frédéric Martel, a French radio host who is the author of “In the Closet of the Vatican” and other books on LGBTQ+ issues, hailed the choice on X, formerly Twitter, as a previously unimaginable “symbolic victory” for the LGBTQ+ community. His post was met with a barrage of homophobic replies.
“In France, many people feel like it’s just a private matter, but I don’t believe that,” Martel, who is gay, told me. “Attal is prime minister, he is openly gay, and that’s important. For a lot of people of my generation, having a gay prime minister is just unbelievable. And he will make history forever for it — that’s just a fact.”
A separate question is what Attal will do with that fact — specifically, whether he will try to use it to advocate for LGBTQ+ rights.
Attal, who has served as education minister for the past six months, replaces a stern technocrat, Élisabeth Borne, who had vastly more administrative experience when Macron named her to the job in 2022. “I want to dedicate my nomination to all little girls and tell them to go all the way in pursuing your dreams,” she said at her inauguration.
Attal has spoken frankly about his own travails as a young gay person, including suffering online abuse as a teenager and being outed by a former classmate in 2018. But he has given no indication that he will follow Borne’s example in offering himself as a role model, despite the risks of bullying and harassment faced by LGBTQ+ boys and girls.
As education minister, for instance, he appeared reluctant to press for an investigation into the death of a teenage boy who killed himself a year ago after experiencing anti-gay bullying at his school in the Vosges region of eastern France, according to French media reports.
Attal was more proactive in deciding, weeks after taking over the ministry, to ban Muslim schoolgirls from wearing the long, flowing robes called abayas. That was broadly popular and in line with French views of secularism at public schools, where Christian crucifixes are also prohibited. But it also signaled that Attal is unlikely to champion minority rights.
It is his prerogative, and Macron’s as president, to set the French government’s agenda. Both men are pragmatists; for both, a priority will be the sorry state of France’s understaffed, underresourced schools, as well as its underpaid teachers. Education, Attal said in his inaugural speech as prime minister, is “the mother of all our battles.”
As for the battles he faced as a gay person in his youth, he seems to have left those in the past.
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