Au revoir, Christian Vanneste!
After posting a video yesterday in which he downplayed the persecution of gay people during the Holocaust and accused LGBTs of being fundamentally narcissistic, the MP Monsieur was kicked out of the Conservative Party by embarrassed leaders like French prez Nicolas Sarkozy.
Sarkozy, for his own part, ain’t exactly avant-garde on gay issues but Vanneste’s callous remarks in the rambling 20-minute video were positively primeval. Here’s a selection:
*The gays are “at the heart of power” in France and are coercing the media to be positive toward them.
*He calls the persecution of gays in Nazi-occupied France a “famous legend.”
*Gay people are obviously causing humanity to “lose its dignity.”
*”Fundamental to homosexuality is narcissism,” he says, “The foundation is ‘I refuse the other,’ the refusal of the opposite sex.”
Vanneste has made lame anti-gay statements in the past, but was merely fined. Now he’ll pay the price of a lost salary.
How do you say “good riddance” in French?
Photo via Wikimedia Commons
MikeE
“bon débarras”
Cam
He did the worst thing you can do. He said publicly what many in the party say privately.
Geri
Just think, if that closet bisexual Adolf Hitler hadn’t flipped and decided to purge the Nazi Party of all out gay and bisexual members in 1934 (including his close friend Ernst Röhm; the co-founder of the Stormtroopers) the Germans might have won World War 2.
the crustybastard
Cleanup on Aisle 3!
@Geri: Take your Scott Lively bullshit elsewhere, asshole.
Steve
Isn’t there a law against holocaust denial in France? He might be facing more than removal from his party depending on how that law was written
Expat - Queer Supremacist
@No. 5 – we’ll have to see how it all works out, although it does not seem likely he will be jailed.
I don’t think he expected such a strong reaction from all sides of the political spectrum (even the extreme right).
For those who read French:
http://www.lavoixdunord.fr/Region/actualite/Secteur_Region/2012/02/16/article_christian-vanneste-recidive-avec-un-coup.shtml
Elmwood Mac
Oueff du formage!!
Danny
Did it ever dawn on this guy that members of the media are thoughtful enough to have taken the time and effort to get to know a wide variety of gay people and so they operate off the real world experience of knowing actual gay friends, family, and neighbors, rather than operating through ignorance, political ambition, and plain-old prejudice?
Queer Supremacist
Au revoir, mon breeder.
I can only guess where his parents were from 1940 to 1945.
cwm
The French are justifiably proud of their contributions to world culture.
After Christian Vanneste had finished expelling from the canon:
Genet, Proust, Gide, Michel Foucault, Cocteau, Roger Peyrefitte, Paul Verlaine (and others I’m forgetting, no doubt)
…would he and his countrymen have anything left but Tour Eiffel and their cuisine?
Geri
@the crustybastard: I was being ironic, or at least I was trying to be. Which is bitterly ironic in itself given the horrific nature of the subject at hand.
It seems that in most, possibly all, bigotry there is lurking some grain of truth as well as a huge helping of stupidity ……though quite what, or where, the grain of truth in Monsieur Vanneste’s particular brand of bigotry might be is currently eluding me.
So Hitler’s Third Reich managed to murder more German gay men than French gay men before they were defeated by the allies – et alors Monsieur Vanneste?
This man is/was a lawmaker?
Tackle
I don’t know about the whole of France, but my ex BF is French and lives in Paris.
When I first went to Paris, I was thinking the city would be progressive and open-minded about sexuality. Boy was I wrong. The city is more conservative then I imagined, and steeped in religion.
The guy while very extreme,is somewhat of a reflection of the country as it is now.