AFP
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NOS News•today, 18:34
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More than 100 famous French people, including members of President Macron’s ruling party, are demanding the resignation of Minister Caroline Cayeux. The reason is anti-LGBTI remarks she made in a television interview.
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In that interview last Tuesday, Cayeux, minister for local governments since the beginning of this month, said she still stands behind her words from 2013 when gay marriage and adoption by LGBT people were legalized in France. At the time, Cayeux called this law “a crazy law” and same-sex marriage “unnatural”.
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“I stand by my position,” she said in the interview. She added: “I have also always said that if the law were passed, I would apply it. I have many friends among all these people. I am the target of an unfair trial.”
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‘Extremely painful’
Cayeux’s comments drew criticism. Transport Minister Clément Beaune called her words extremely painful, government spokesman Olivier Veran called them out of date.
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LGBTI organizations launched a petition calling for the departure of Cayeux and two other members of the government who opposed the introduction of same-sex marriage in 2013. Prominent French politicians demand Cayeux’s resignation in The Sunday newspaper.
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In the appeal in the weekly with more than a hundred signatories, not only is Cayeux’s position on gay marriage and adoption criticized, the signatories also react strongly to the fact that she spoke about ‘these people’ in the interview.
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“How can she not see that in her eyes ‘these people’ apparently do not belong to the same category of citizens?” is in the pamphlet, which labels Cayeux’s comments as homophobic.
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The deputy mayor of Paris and LGBT activist Jean-Luc Romero-Michel also signed the appeal. “I think it is unworthy that a minister can stay in this place and make these comments and speak of us as ‘these people’, such a disparaging remark,” he told the news channel. France info.
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Cayeux has since apologized for her comments. “My words have hurt many of you, I deeply regret it,” she wrote in it. “They were inappropriate.”
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