The politics of PACS in a transatlantic mirror: Same‐sex unions and sexual difference in France today

Abstract

1989 was not only the year the Berlin Wall finally collapsed. In France, 1989 was primarily the year of the Bicentennial of the French Revolution—that is, at long last, the Revolution was over (at least, according to Francois Furet1). This meant that, henceforth, instead of opposing 1776 to 1789, a (good) liberal Revolution to a (bad) radical Revolution, French “neo-liberals” could invoke de Tocqueville to denounce the perils of democracy in America—thus turning around the transatlantic mirror: in contrast to a French tradition of civility fortunately inherited from a happy combination of the Old and New Regimes merging in the “Republique,” “democratic passions” (meaning the immoderate love of equality) jeopardized the American nation. This became intellectual common sense in Parisian circles in the following years, in response to American (so-called) political correctness, and shortly thereafter, to (so-called) sexual correctness. In France, 1989 was also the year of the affaire du foulard: should young Muslim women be allowed to wear a veil in public schools? The political choice was generally presented as an alternative between the principle of laicite (secularism) and a (somewhat unprincipled) cultivation of cultural difference. Language notwithstanding, this debate was not so much about religion: in fact, it reflected a growing concern about the “integration” of immigrants, or rather, second-generation immigrants, in French society. The defense of a national model against the perils of ethnic fragmentation was elaborated by public intellectuals such as Elisabeth Badinter, Regis Debray, and Alain Finkielkraut—in the name of the “Republique.” Resisting ghettoisation, they identified the French nation with what they defined as a universalist model of individual integration. In the process, they too drew on a transatlantic contrast: American differentialism (that is, the communautarisme of identity politics) was the mirror image of French universalism (that is, the individualisme of Republican politics).