Gay Power | TF1 | Le Droit de savoir

Twenty years ago in the Marais” district of Paris, they hid behind the smoky windows of bars with closed doors. To get in, you had to show your credentials. But since the mid-nineties, the Paris gay community has “come out of the closet”, proclaiming their identity. Today, the Marais bar terraces spill out on the sidewalks, the windows and the doors are open. Thirty years after the sexual revolution and twenty years after AIDS was discovered, homosexuals no longer want to hide and are letting it be known. This affirmation of their identity goes beyond the Marais “ghetto.” Mentalities have changed due to the huge mobilization of homosexuals in the fight against AIDS, their influence on fashion, advertising, films, television, the success of Gay Pride parades, the PACS vote in 1999 (legalizing homosexual couples), and finally the election of Bertrand Delanoë (a declared homosexual) as mayor of Paris. Since the beginning of the eighties, the homosexual movement, through organizing and structuring itself into a myriad of interconnected associations, has created a powerful lobby group. International homosexual networks have been put into place. A new association, “The Other Circle” is made up of managers who meet to exchange addresses and provide recommendations in job hunting or for career advancement. This lobbying, a new phenomena, extends through-out France and is gaining other countries. “It’s only justice,” one manager explains. “We’ve suffered, been rejected, put into a closet all our professional lives. Today our influence on society has given us power and we’re profiting from it.””