A Public Offense against Decency: the Trial of the Count de Germiny and the “Moral Order” of the Third Republic

Abstract

Throughout the nineteenth century, France was one of the few countries in Europe which did not have a specific law against homosexual behaviour. It had abolished its medieval laws against sodomy in 1791 and had established a new criminal code in 1810. Its new laws prohibited sexual activities in public and sexual relations with minors, whether homosexual or heterosexual. As a result, it had a reputation for openness and toleration which contributed to the development of a male homosexual subculture in Paris. Yet despite this reputation, the very vagueness of the laws allowed the police to turn on homosexuals as scapegoats for the political, social, or economic problems of the times.¹ The sensational trial of the Count de Germiny for “a public offense against decency” in 1876 is one such example of the authorities’ attack on homosexuality as a means of shoring up the social order.