• Ten years after the opening of marriage to lesbian and gay couples, 20 Minutes devotes a series of articles, videos, podcasts... around this anniversary. From political, cultural or economic angles.
  • Since the law was enacted in 2013, examples of same-sex marriages in wedding-themed shows have remained rare. The productions of these programs say they want to show that these are marriages "like the others".
  • However, there is still a lot of room for improvement in terms of visibility and representation of gay marriages on the small screen.

Jefferson and Diego said "I do" to the mayor, without knowing each other. They are the first men to have united in the story of "Married at First Sight", the M6 show. Some 2.1 million viewers experienced this moment of emotion broadcast Monday night, almost ten years to the day after the final adoption of the law called "marriage for all".

This program, put on the air in 2016, which marries singles discovering each other on the day of the ceremony because "experts" felt that their profiles could match, waited until its seventh season to form a gay couple. "We had not managed to create a homosexual couple with sufficient compatibility in previous editions," Karen Aboab, artistic producer at Studio 89, told us last month before the start of the broadcast of the unpublished episodes. With a compatibility of 79%, Jefferson and Diego were perfect candidates for this first. The fact remains that the production did not open its registrations to gays and lesbians until season 5.

"A ceremony among others"

"4 weddings for 1 honeymoon", the other emblematic bridal show of French TV, created in 2011 on TF1 and broadcast since 2020 on TFX, was quicker to integrate gay couples. It was in November 2014, a year and a half after the promulgation of egalitarian marriage, that the faithful of the competition discovered on their screens the union of Jocelyn and Jean-Claude. However, their application had been selected well in advance since the production had selected the Northerners in July 2013. "We asked the other three bride judges if they bothered attending a gay wedding. They were, on the contrary, delighted, "said at the time the producer Aurélie Kasmadjian to our colleagues of 20 Minutes Switzerland. Rather than play the suspense by scheduling the episode dedicated to the two gay spouses on the weekend, she made sure that it was broadcast from the first day, Monday, because "for us, it was a ceremony among others".

This desire not to stand out stuck with the motivations of lovebirds who wanted to "give a beautiful image of a gay union" and "break the clichés", as Jocelyn declared at the time to Télé Star. "A gay couple doesn't necessarily go out to nightclubs!" he added. Tony, another gay candidate of "4 marriages for 1 honeymoon", had the same concern for normativity. "We're like everyone else, and we wanted to show that. We live our lives quietly, far from the extravagance that some fantasize," he told us in 2016. This Niçois would not have wanted to participate in a special week "gay couples": "It would not have been the same thing. Being drowned like this among three other straight married duos makes us a normal couple, even if this word is not ideal. »

The production, ITV Studios France, which we contacted for this article, did not wish to respond in detail on the subject of same-sex couples. She makes it a non-subject and limited herself to reminding us that in the history of the program, eight gay or lesbian couples have lent themselves to the game. This is not much, but due to the fact that non-hetero applications would be ultra-minority among all those that the production receives. The hypothesis that couples of men or women are reluctant to invite cameras for "the happiest day of their lives" is to be considered. That they are reluctant to the idea of strangers undernotating their surprise bread with acerbic comments is also to be considered.

Gay "Z'amours" since 2003

The small screen still has a good margin of progression to give visibility to gay marriages, but it is possible to see the glass half full. The Taubira law was accompanied by a televisual legitimization of same-gender couples. In 1998, then presenter of Z'Amours, Jean-Luc Reichmann came up against the incomprehension of Michèle Cotta and Alain Duhamel, at the head of France 2 at the time, when he proposed to involve gay and lesbian couples. "They looked at me and said, 'But it's not possible, we're going to do homosexual specials?' ", he told Europe 1 a few years ago...

It will take five years for the facilitator's wish to come true. "It's normal to welcome people who love each other. It's 2003," said producer Hélène Savidan. To date, we have no negative feedback. It was a few months before the "marriage of Bègles" that hit the headlines... Until it disappeared from the grid of France 2 in 2021, the game regularly welcomed gays and lesbians, even if it irritated the homophobic fringe of its loyal viewers. Not enough to intimidate the host Bruno Guillon who responded to a user in 2018: "If seeing LGBT couples in Les Z'amours bothers you, know that it is with undisguised pleasure that I will receive others, many others. "

A gay wedding in "Love is in the meadow"

Many have forgotten it, but it is a couple of men, Steven and Raoul who won, in 2004, the only season of Chantier, a reality show of M6, where several couples built a house together but eliminated each other over the weeks to become the sole owners. Who also remembers Benjamin, whom his mother Odile was trying to fit in season 1 of Who wants to marry my son? in 2010 on TF1 - he did not mark the spirits, unlike Giuseppe and his mother Marie-France.

Much more striking, on the other hand, the couple formed by Matthieu and Alexandre, in season 15 of Love is in the meadow, in 2020. Now divorced, they formed the first gay married couple on the M6 matrimonial show, which in recent years regularly integrates gays and lesbians into its castings. Karine Le Marchand was their witness and the cameras of the sixth channel had been of the wedding.

The risk of homophobia

What to encourage single and gay farmers to find their half via the show? Guillaume, happy candidate of the last season to date ensures that no. "I met straight couples from 'Love and in the Meadow' at agricultural shows and I saw that it was not flan. I told myself that it could do it and that I was ready," he told us last fall. However, "appearing on television" is also unfortunately taking the risk of exposing oneself to gayphobia or lesbophobia? The production systematically makes participants aware of the bad aspects of social networks. "We tell them that there will be derogatory, homophobic comments, that this will unfortunately happen," explained Louise Horellou, one of the casting officers.

"I even received hateful messages from the gay community. Men who told me: "With a mouth like that, I would not appear on TV" or who, commenting on a photo where I was side by side with Alain [another gay bachelor of the last season]: "This one must take fists in the heart. one and the other have a big package," lamented Guillaume. We see some comments like that but, next to it, there are hundreds that are encouraging, who welcome the fact that we do not have a stereotypical physique of the tall and muscular gay. Ten years after the vote of the "marriage for all" law, the question of the television visibility of homosexuals and their representations remains an issue that remains unresolved. On this point, gay and lesbian couples are not equal to their straight counterparts.

  • Entertainment
  • Television
  • Marriage for all
  • LGBT+ Movement
  • Marriage
  • Love is in the meadow
  • Married at first sight
  • TF1
  • M6
  • France 2