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PHOTOS: Forget Those Marriage Equality Protestors, Let’s Celebrate The Gay French

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For better and worse, the French and their complicated relationship with marriage equality continue to make news. After France became the 14th nation to recognize same sex unions, Vincent Autin and Bruno Boileau (pictured above) became the first couple to marry under the new law on Wednesday.

This was after hundreds of thousands of “dead-enders” in the predominantly Catholic country protested the new law over the weekend, as well as this extremist. They’re acting like nobody’s ever been gay in France! So here’s a list to prove there are gay French and probably always have been. And now they can get married. A votre santé!

Photos: Getty, Wikipedia

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Yves St. Laurent (1936-2008)

The fashion legend started young, creating intricate paper dolls and designing dresses for his mother and sisters by his early teens. At 18, Saint Laurent moved to Paris and enrolled at the Chambre Syndicale de la Couture; at 21 he was the head designer at Christian Dior. Then it was jet-setting, chain-smoking, coke, Andy, Liza, Regine’s and Studio 54. Days before he died in 2008, St. Laurent was married in a civil ceremony to his longtime partner and companion Pierre Berge (above right).

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Arthur Rimbaud (1854-1891)

The Jim Morrison of his time, the poet Rimbaud was a great beauty, libertine and a member of the “decadent movement” in Europe in the late 19th century. Described by Victor Hugo as the “infant Shakespeare,” he scandalized Paris and London with his open homosexuality before giving up writing at the age of 20.

Bertrand Delanoe

Bertrand Delanoe

The Socialist mayor of Paris since 2001, Delanoe came out in a television interview in 1998. In 2009 he publicly condemned Pope Benedict XVI for denying the efficacy of condoms in the fight against AIDS. Don’t get us started.

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Colette 1873-1954

The performer and author of Gigi famously caused a riot at the Moulin Rouge in 1907 when she shared an onstage kiss with a woman in the Pharaonic fantasy Rêve d’Égypte. Police were called, show was banned, Gigi was made into a musical.

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Cyril Collard 1957-1993

Best known for his film Les Nuits Fauves (Savage Nights), Collard produced frank and unapologetic portrayals of sexuality and AIDS in his writing, films and music. He was one of the first French artists to speak openly about his HIV status.

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Francois Ozon

Ozon is one of the leaders of the new “New Wave” of French cinema, with work known for satirical, sexually liberated characters, often featuring iconic French actors, like Catherine Deneuve and Gerard Depardieu (Potiche) and Fanny Ardant and Isabelle Hupert (8 Femmes). Nearly all of Ozon’s films feature a gay storyline or character.

Jean-Cocteau

Jean Cocteau (1889-1963)

One of the pillars of the Avant Garde, Cocteau was a polymath genius at its center. Best known for his novel Les Enfants (1929), and the films Beauty and the Beast (1946) and Orpheus (1949), the poet-novelist-designer-playwright-artist-and-filmmaker counted among his friends and lovers Kenneth Anger, Pablo Picasso, Jean Marais, Edith Piaf, Marlene Dietrich, Coco Chanel, Erik Satie, and Igor Stravinsky.

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Jean Genet (1910-1986)

Genet started life as a petty criminal and thug but later took up writing, with much of his fiction adapted for the screen, including Fassbinder’s Querelle, Todd Haynes’ Poison, and Mademoiselle, adapted by Marguerite Dumas for gay director Tony Richardson. As a political activist, Genet lived with and wrote about the Black Panthers, spent six months in Palestinian refugee camps and supported the Red Army Faction and Baader Meinof. Radical.

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Jean-Paul Gaultier

Known as the enfant terrible of fashion, the designer of Madonna’s pointy bra was hired by Pierre Cardin in 1970 and showed his first collection in 1976. He designed the wardrobe for several films including Luc Besson’s The Fifth Element and Almodovar’s Kika, and in 2012 he sat on the jury at Cannes, a fashion designer first. Oh, and he introduced man-skirts in 1985.

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Marcel Proust 1871-1922

Best known for his monumental novel In Search of Lost Time (you may know it by its earlier translation Remembrance of Things Past), which was published in seven parts over fourteen years, Proust was a closeted gay man who wrote freely about gay themes. One of his lovers, the writer Lucien Daudet, leans on Proust in the photo above, circa 1894. Yup, they were a sepia-toned item.

Sliimy

Sliimy

Last year we told you about this adorable French Moroccan-Algerian pop phenom who broke out with his cover of Britney Spears’ “Womanizer.” Fans include Katy Perry, Lady Gaga and Perez Hilton, who signed him to his label, whatever that means. “I embrace it and don’t want to hide it,” Sliimy said of his sexual orientation. Do not repeat that when you’re alone with Perez.

 

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