16/07/2019
On Monday night, Classic FM, one of Britain's national classical music radio networks, presents a programme dedicated to the amazing works of French composers. The showcase will mark the two hundred and thirtieth anniversary of the storming of the Bastille Prison, an essential chapter in the French Revolution of 1789. Although the revolution brought much bloodshed for a period and the prospect of War with resolutely monarchist Britain, LGBT people are often grateful for the legal reforms that the French Revolution instituted. The old laws of the French Bourbon government were replaced by a new penal code based on rationalism and scientific endeavour and to that end, homosexuality was decriminalised by the new French state in 1791. Although it by no means brought an end to homophobia in France, as can be witnessed by the vicious activities of the anti-gay Manif Pour Tout movement against marriage equality, the principle of separation of church and state and the need to get the government out of people's bedchambers was a hard won and important principle which has helped shape democracy around the globe in the two centuries since the French Revolution.
