André Baudry (31 August 1922 – 1 February 2018) was a French writer who was the founder of the homophile review ''

Arcadie The Association Arcadie, or simply Arcadie, was a French homophile organization established in the early 1950s by André Baudry, an ex-seminarian and philosophy professor. Miller, Neil. Out of the Past: Gay and Lesbian History from 1869 to the Pres ...

''. A former seminarian and philosophy professor, Baudry became interested in the debate about sexuality following the publication of the

Kinsey report The Kinsey Reports are two scholarly books on human sexual behavior, ''Sexual Behavior in the Human Male'' (1948) and ''Sexual Behavior in the Human Female'' (1953), written by Alfred Kinsey, Wardell Pomeroy, Clyde Martin, and (for ''Sexual Behavi ...

in 1948, the '' Deuxième Sexe'' by

Simone de Beauvoir Simone Lucie Ernestine Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir (, ; ; 9 January 1908 – 14 April 1986) was a French existentialist philosopher, writer, social theorist, and feminist activist. Though she did not consider herself a philosopher, and even th ...

en 1952, and the theology thesis of the same year entitled ''Vie Chrétienne et problèmes de la sexualité'' by Marc Oraison. This thesis, which clearly articulated the position for the Catholic Church to take a more inclusive attitude towards homosexuality, was blacklisted by the Church. The ''Arcadie'' review was created by André Baudry with the support of

Roger Peyrefitte Roger is a given name, usually masculine, and a surname. The given name is derived from the Old French personal names ' and '. These names are of Germanic origin, derived from the elements ', ''χrōþi'' ("fame", "renown", "honour") and ', ' ( ...

and

Jean Cocteau Jean Maurice Eugène Clément Cocteau (, , ; 5 July 1889 – 11 October 1963) was a French poet, playwright, novelist, designer, filmmaker, visual artist and critic. He was one of the foremost creatives of the su ...

. It was immediately forbidden for sale to minors and was censured. André Baudry was prosecuted in 1955 for "outrage aux bonnes mœurs" (outrage against good morals), convicted, and fined 400,000 francs. The review emphasized homosexuality as a form of consciousness and self-identity as opposed to a sexuality per se. Baudry sought to shape the popular image of homosexuals as conventional members of society with conventional desires. In 1960, at the time of the promulgation of the ''Mirguet amendment'' which cast homosexuality as the source of all social ills, Baudry eliminated the classified ads and photographs from the review, out of fear of being shut down. During its years of publication, ''Arcadie'' was the most influential homophile publication in francophone Europe. The number of subscribers fluctuated between 1300 and 10,000. These subscriptions allowed to create the Arcadie Club. In 1975, André Baudry was invited to testify on the television on ''les Dossiers de l'écran''. He renamed the Arcadie association the « Mouvement homophile de France » (Homophile Movement of France). In 1979, he invited a large congress of sympathetic well-known intellectuals like

Michel Foucault Paul-Michel Foucault (, ; ; 15 October 192625 June 1984) was a French philosopher, historian of ideas, writer, political activist, and literary critic. Foucault's theories primarily address the relationship between power and knowledge, and how ...

Robert Merle Robert Merle (; 28 August 1908 – 27 March 2004) was a French novelist. Early life Merle was born in 1908 in Tébessa, French Algeria. His father Félix, who was an interpreter "with a perfect knowledge of literary and spoken Arabic", was kille ...

, and

Paul Veyne Paul Veyne (; 13 June 1930 – 29 September 2022) was a French archaeologist and historian, and a specialist of Ancient Rome. A student of the École Normale Supérieure and member of the École française de Rome, he was honorary professor at th ...

Bibliography

* Christopher Miles
« Arcadie, ou l'impossible éden »
''La Revue h'', Number 1, 1996. * Georges Sidéris

in

Esther Benbassa Esther Benbassa (born 27 March 1950) is a French-Turkish-Israeli historian and politician. She specializes in the history of Jews and other minorities. Since 2011, Benbassa has served as a French senator, representing Paris from 2017 onwards an ...

et J.-C. Attias, ''La Haine de soi'', Bruxelles, Complexe, 2000. * Olivier Jablonski, « Arcadie », ''Dictionnaire des cultures gays et lesbiennes'', Larousse, 2003. * Julian Jackson, « Arcadie : sens et enjeux de « l'homophilie » en France, 1954-1982 »
''Revue d'histoire moderne et contemporaine''
Volume 53, No. 4, 2006. * Julian T. Jackson, « Sur l’homosexualité en France au XXe siècle (entretien avec Hervé Baudry) »

nº 2, 2007. * Julian Jackson, « Arcadie », ''La vie homosexuelle en France, de l'après-guerre à la dépénalisation'', Éditions Autrement, Paris, 2009.

Bibliography

See also

References

Further reading

Archival resources