France lays out LGBT education plan to fight discrimination
France has revealed a wide-ranging national plan to fight LGBT discrimination in the country through inclusive education.
The aim of the 3-year plan is “to fully recognize” the rights of the members of the LGBT community and turn them into reality, according to French Junior Minister of Gender Equality Elisabeth Moreno.
Speaking to French media, Moreno said, “LGBT people are totally invisible, they are citizens who have rights but who struggle to have these rights recognized.”
France takes LGBT recognition forward
The plan has 40 objectives and 42 measures that are designed to address homophobia and transphobia at home, school, university, work, healthcare, and sports.
Some of the measures have already been implemented. However, Moreno said that will measures will be amplified between now and 2023.
In particular, there are plans to facilitate adoption for LGBT homes, the gender equality minister said. She pointed out that, “Gay people were given the right to adopt in 2013, but few actually have access.”
Meanwhile, the national plan will also act against conversion therapy, which has been described by Moreno as “abject and medieval practices” to change the sexual orientation of LGBT people.
“We want to ban them outright,” she said.
To include same-sex families, administrative forms will be adapted to include them. Furthermore, police stations will be get their own LGBT champions.
Measures to push LGBT education
Moreno also said that she will be working with her counterpart at the Education ministry, Jean-Michel Blanquer, o the training for teachers that have LGBT students.
A website on Éduquer contre les LGBTphobies or “Educating against LGBTphobia” will be set up to “give teachers the weapons to fight homophobia and transphobia, and allow the proper inclusion of LGBT students.”
“Because discrimination and inequality are rooted in childhood, they can also be corrected, by putting in resources,” Moreno said.
She added, “The school must therefore be the first place of awareness and prevention to participate in deconstructing stubborn stereotypes.”
The plan was made in partnership with the Délégation interministérielle à la lutte contre le racisme, l’antisémitisme et la haine anti-LGBT (DILCRAH).
This is France’s official delegation to counter racism, antisemitism and hate against LGBT people.
LGBT discrimination in France
According to the French interior ministry, 1,870 people were victims of homophobic and transphobic acts in the country last year.
Likewise, 55 percent of French LGBT people had experienced anti-LGBT acts in their lifetime.
Gay and bisexual are four times more likely to commit suicide than the rest of the population. This is double for transgender people.
To deal with this, 68 percent of LGBT people said they use “invisibility strategies” to avoid attacks, in a 2019 survey by the French opinion institute Ifop.
“This situation is unacceptable in the France of 2020”, Moreno said.