Florian Philippot, a vice-president of France’s far-right Front National (FN) party, goes to court on Monday to sue a gossip magazine after it published photos of him earlier this month that ‘outed’ him as gay. Just several days later, a founder of the French LGBT rights group GayLib, Sébastian Chenu, announced he had joined the FN as ‘cultural advisor’ to its president, Marine Le Pen, and would in the future stand as an election candidate for the party whose founder, Marine’s father Jean-Marie Le Pen, once notoriously described homosexuality as "a biological and social anomaly". Yet despite the FN’s homophobic history, and its recent opposition to the same-sex marriage law, Act Up Paris founder Didier Lestrade, author of a book entitled Why gays moved to the Right, says he believes a significant number of gays are increasingly attracted by the far-right. In this interview with Joseph Confavreux he explains why, argues that the FN leader is seeking “to try and enroll minority struggles in her fight against Islam”, and underlines that “people like Chenu and Philippot are not only symbols that can set an example, but also they arrive with networks”.
