Living in Arcadia: Homosexuality, Politics, and
Morality in France from the Liberation to AIDS
by Julian Jackson
University of Chicago Press
321 pages, $40.
When traveling in France a few months ago, I noticed how in several cities many newsstands displayed eye-catching posters for the main gay magazine Têtu. I knew this was a common sight in Paris, but I wasn’t aware this was the case throughout France. Common as this sight is in modern-day France, this kind of publicity for a magazine was forbidden by French authorities until long after World War II. Nevertheless, several gay titles tried their luck soon after the war. Only one, started in 1954, managed to get past the many legal hurdles and survive for any length of time. Its name was Arcadie, and its driving force was André Baudry, who is now 87 years old and lives near Naples, Italy. London-based historian Julian Jackson, who specializes in the cultural history of modern France, has written a remarkable book full of vivid details about this forgotten episode in French gay history.
During the war, many youngsters were forced to resort to illegal behavior due to the austere living conditions. Post-war politicians saw it as their task to discipline these youngsters back into model citizens. A law was introduced in 1949 by the provisional de Gaulle government that was meant to keep publications that incited “banditism, falsehood, theft, idleness, cowardice, hatred and debauchery” out of the hands of young people. Arcadie was clearly the kind of publication that French authorities had in mind. Other gay titles, such as Futur, tested the waters as well but were eventually condemned and did not last.
Baudry had the clever idea of coupling a mandatory subscription to the magazine to the right of admission to a social club that he started in the rue Béranger in 1957. There, gay men could come together to socialize, listen to lectures, get legal advice, and, last but not least, dance. Although its official name was Clespala (a French acronym for “Literary and Scientific Club of the Latin Countries”), it was mainly known by the name Arcadie, after the magazine. This grand idea of coupling a noble cause with the possibility of having a good time proved to be a successful one, surviving until the commercial boom of gay venues in the 1970’s. Thus an austere and serious-looking magazine was able to survive thanks to people who simply wanted a safe and fun place to hang out.
Even though “sodomy” had been taken out of criminal law by Napoleon, three articles of the Penal Code were still on the books in the 20th century and were used to persecute homosexuals. During World War II, things only got worse. The Vichy regime made it illegal for an adult to have homosexual sex with anyone under 21. In contrast, the age of consent for heterosexual sex was thirteen. As in Germany, anti-gay legislation from that era was kept on the books after the war was over. As a precaution, Baudry decided that no one under 21 could visit Arcadie. In 1949, an ordinance was issued in Paris forbidding men from dancing together in public. In this case, Baudry used his extensive contacts with the police to secure an exemption for his club.
While Arcadie had an even more austere outlook than the homophile magazine One in California, subscribers did find in their monthly issue some black-and-white homoerotic pictures and a leaflet with personal ads (“Feuille confidentielle”). But even this feature was stopped, to the dismay of readers, after the so-called Mirguet amendment of 1960, which doubled the penalty for indecent exposure. Here, too, Baudry felt he had no choice but to comply or face legal prosecution.
Much of Jackson’s account in Living in Arcadia reads as an uninterrupted story of government persecution of homosexuals and Baudry’s attempts to navigate—or circumvent—its laws. For the most part, Baudry succeeded in creating a separate space, an Arcadia, where gay men could socialize in peace. Even though the magazine held fast to a doctrine of assimilation, Arcadie did mainly the opposite: driven by a harsh outside world, its producers turned inward and created a world of their own.
Baudry had an authoritarian streak and led the organization single-handedly until its demise in 1982. For this he was seriously criticized by some activists, increasingly so near the end of the 60’s. When new needs and possible chapters within the club (women, the young, Catholics) tested the waters, he wouldn’t hesitate to kick them out if they disagreed with him. But Jackson also shows that Baudry had little choice but to keep a tight grip on his organization. He points out, for example, that Baudry himself was much more militant when he founded the magazine but learned the hard way to accommodate himself to the real world.
His tragic flaw, one might say, was that he clung to this cautious stance for too long even when times had changed. The gay liberationists of the 70’s shouted their lungs out to announce that they were ready for change. “The French Stonewall,” as Jackson calls it, was a panel discussion on live radio in 1971 whose patronizing tone led militants in the audience to shout the broadcast off the air. Baudry sat on the panel and was interrupted when he spoke of the suffering of homosexuals. “Stop talking about our suffering!” someone shouted, and others joined in the jeering. These activists would start the infamous Homosexual Revolutionary Action Front, FHAR. Arcadie, with its assimilationist goals, never approved of these liberationist politics, and the magazine began to fade now that coming out was the strategy of the day.
Arcadie disappeared just as AIDS was rearing its terrifying head in Europe. Perhaps it could have played a positive role as a trusted source of information and support. But the gay community was not prepared for another round of moralizing. Baudry, by then sixty years old, had grown bitter over criticism of his magazine and threw in the towel in 1982. He went to Italy never to set foot in Paris again.
In his concluding chapter, Jackson observes that the Paris gay district “le Marais” exemplifies what Arcadie was striving for: a neighborhood where gays can be themselves without fear. And he also argues that France’s answer to civil unions, the Pacte Civil de Solidarité or “Pacs,” is an institution that “couldn’t be more Arcadian.” Along with same-sex marriage, it represents a further step in a process whereby gay men and lesbians want to be full participants in civil society. In contrast, he declares that “the radicalism of the 1970’s appears more like a parenthesis in the history of modern homosexuality than a new departure.”
Hans Soetaert is the initiator and co-founder of Fonds Suzan Daniel, the Belgian gay and lesbian archive and documentation center.
