Out in Office: Openly Gay and Lesbian French Politicians & the Politics of Representation

Is it important to elect openly lesbian and gay (LG) politicians? Behind this seemingly provocative question, serious issues need to be tackled: How does one identify LG elected officials? Which levels of government matter in dealing with LG issues? What kind of leeway do these politicians have to improve the living conditions of LG individuals while in office? To try to answer some of those questions, I will give a brief overview of the socio-demographic profiles and political alignement of openly LG elected representatives in France. Then, drawing on a corpus of thirty extensive ethnographic interviews, I will engage in the debate around political representation (substantive vs descriptive) by focusing on the links between those politicians and previous LGBT activism, as well as the ways in which they navigate dominant French political philosophy (namely Republican universalism which generally prohibits members of a community to openly acknowledge that they can function as representatives of their community in office).