Word: mitterrand
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...broadcast, Le Pen - favored to succeed her father Jean-Marie Le Pen as leader of the far-right National Front party - voices her outrage at Mitterrand's accounts, and demands he resign from the culture portfolio. Le Pen has been critical of public figures in France who rushed to defend Polanski following his arrest in Switzerland on U.S. arrest warrants for his 1997 guilty plea to criminal charges of having sex with a minor...
...just the far right calling for Mitterrand's head. Socialist Party spokesman Benoît Hamon echoed Le Pen's criticism of the Culture Minister. Hamon said he was "violently shocked that a man could justify sexual tourism under the cover of literature." He also lamented that even as France and Thailand work together to halt Western exploitation of Asian sex workers, "here comes a government minister to explain how he himself is a consumer of it." Several other Socialist Party officials expressed concerns and demanded Mitterrand explain himself or resign...
...Conservatives from the ruling center-right Union for a Popular Majority backed Mitterrand. On Thursday evening, a close aide to Nicolas Sarkozy said the French President backed his Culture Minister and described the controversy around him as "pathetic." A few of Mitterrand's backers noted that while disturbing in parts, La Mauvaise Vie has been hailed by critics both for its literary boldness and its provocative examination of homosexuality. Mitterrand, who was tapped for the Culture Ministry job by Sarkozy in June, has long been open about his sexuality. His defenders note that the current hubbub over the book...
...detractors point out that sleeping with minors is indeed a crime - and that if, as Mitterrand's book suggests, that is what he did, he should step down. But Mitterrand has always maintained his novel was intended as a kind of full disclosure of things he'd seen and experienced. While the portion of the book dealing with prostitution might worry some readers - "I got into the habit of paying for boys," he writes - Mitterrand argues that his use of the word boy referred to younger men rather than minors. Many older gay men use the expression in that...
...French television on Thursday night, Mitterrand condemned pedophilia and sex tourism, and said that the men he paid for sex were his own age. He accused his critics of failing to distinguish between homosexuality and pedophilia...