“
It was bullshit
”.
At the microphone of Europe 1, the former Minister of Culture and National Education, Jack Lang was questioned by Sonia Mabrouk on his signature in 1977 of a platform defending pedophilia.
"There are no words to define incest and pedophilia,
" he repeated, stressing that he had changed his mind.
Read also: The shock wave of the Duhamel affair
In January 1977, this column published in the newspaper
Le Monde
defended the faculty of consent of minors aged 13.
This article was written following the trial of three men who had filmed and photographed victims aged 12 or 13, during "sex games".
“
We consider that there is a manifest disproportion, on the one hand, between the qualification of" crime "which justifies such severity, and the nature of the alleged facts;
on the other hand, between the obsolete nature of the law and the daily reality of a society which tends to recognize in children and adolescents the existence of a sexual life.
[...]
French law contradicts itself when it recognizes a capacity of discernment in a minor of thirteen or fourteen years that it can judge and condemn, whereas it refuses him this capacity when it comes to his life emotional and sexual
”, could one read in the tribune.
"
A series of intellectuals
"
Jack Lang wanted to put this platform in the context of his time.
“
It was after 1968 and we were carried by a libertarian wind.
This forum was unacceptable,
”he defended himself.
The former minister wanted to put his participation in this forum into perspective by listing the famous names who had signed the petition there.
"
We were very numerous at the time to sign this forum: there was Daniel Cohn-Bendit, Michel Foucault, a series of intellectuals
", Jack Lang is justified.
“
We weren't alone in thinking that.
I am thinking in particular of Catherine Dolto [
doctor and author of a book on children's health]
, who professed this kind of appreciation
”.
Among the signatories of this forum, there were many left-wing figures and intellectuals such as Bernard Kouchner, Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Louis Aragon, André Glucksmann, Gilles Deleuze, Roland Barthes, Francis Ponge or Guy Hocquenghem.
Faced with the insistence of questions from Sonia Mabrouk, who tells him "to
want to understand
", Jack Lang loses his temper.
“
Fifty years ago, we wrote some bullshit,” he
exclaims
.
What should I do ?
Immolate myself in front of you?
".