In 1791, something happened in Paris that the world barely noticed – and whose impact resonates to this day. Just two years after the 1789 Revolution, and as a fulfillment of the promise of Liberté – freedom – France became the first modern country to decriminalize homosexuality. Not a few decades ago. Over 230 years ago.
The Deadly Morality of the Church
Before the French Revolution of 1789, Europe was unequivocal on one issue: any man who had sex with another man – then grouped under the ecclesiastical term "sodomy" – risked being burned at the stake or hanged. While today "sodomy" primarily refers to bestiality, in the ecclesiastical and subsequently adopted legal language of the Middle Ages and early modern period, the term referred to any sex not intended for procreation: sex between men, anal sex between man and woman, masturbation – and yes, also bestiality.
Sodomy was a catch-all term for anything the Church classified as "unnatural." This changed with the philosophers of the French Enlightenment – especially Voltaire and Montesquieu, who laid the groundwork in the 18th century: laws should protect people from harm, not enforce religious morality. When the Revolution transformed these ideas into political power in 1789, criminal law soon followed suit.
The revolutionaries immediately translated Enlightenment ideas into law. In the new criminal code of 1791, legislators removed all offenses based on religious moral beliefs that did not directly harm anyone. Witchcraft? Gone. Heresy? Gone. Sex between men? Also gone.
The revolutionaries immediately translated the ideas of the Enlightenment into law. In the new criminal code of 1791, legislators removed all offenses based on religious moral beliefs that did not directly harm anyone. Witchcraft? Gone. Heresy? Gone. Sex between men? Also gone. The basic idea was as simple as it was radical: Where there is no victim, there is no crime. What two consenting adults do in private is none of the state's business.
Behind this was a principle unknown to Europe until then: the state has no morality to administer – that is the business of the church, and the church has no place in the courtroom. The separation of ecclesiastical morality and state law, the radical separation of church and state, was not a side effect of the Revolution. It was its core.
Napoleon as an Involuntary Exporter
Napoleon Bonaparte waged war across half of Europe – but his baggage also contained France's new laws. Napoleon's Code Civil and the Code Pénal of 1810 maintained the decriminalization of homosexuality. And wherever Napoleon's armies marched, his legal norms followed: into the Netherlands, Belgium, parts of what would later become Germany, especially the Rhineland. While the notorious Paragraph 175 later criminalized gay people in the rest of Germany, France – at least on paper – remained a different country.
No Progress Without Regression
The law did not protect against society. The police used vague clauses like "disturbing public order" to prosecute gay people nonetheless. The Vichy regime, in collusion with Nazi Germany, reintroduced discriminatory age limits in 1942 – which were only finally abolished in 1982 under François Mitterrand.
1791 and Today – An Uncomfortable Comparison
What France enacted in 1791 was the decriminalization of homosexuality – a concrete step, not an abstract principle. Other countries took considerably longer: Great Britain decriminalized in 1967, East Germany in 1968 – West Germany lagged behind and settled for a half-hearted softening in 1969. Paragraph 175, which criminalized gay people in Germany since 1871, was not fully abolished until 1994 after reunification.
And the USA? The country that incessantly celebrates itself as a haven of freedom, "Land of the Free," etched into its constitution, what is the reality today? Consensual sex between men was criminal in several US states until 2003. The Supreme Court had to intervene because the states wouldn't do it themselves. Today, in 2026, laws are being passed again in several US states that systematically push gay and queer people out of public life. In fact, the United States is worse off on this issue than France was 235 years ago.
Paris was never perfect. But the foundation of freedom was laid in the gunpowder smoke of the Revolution – at a time when people were still traded as property in America and freedom primarily applied to white men with property.
Gay Art. Gay art for your home. ARTWORK IMAGES.
