Jean Le Bitoux

Jean Le Bitoux
Jean Le Bitoux (right) with Yves Navarre, 1981
Born	August 16, 1948 Bordeaux, France
Died	April 21, 2010 Paris, France
Resting place	Père Lachaise Cemetery
Occupation	Journalist

Jean Le Bitoux (1948-2010) was a French journalist and gay activist. He was the founder of Gai pied, the first mainstream gay magazine in France. He was a campaigner for Holocaust remembrance of homosexual victims. He was the author of several books about homosexuality.

Jean Le Bitoux was born on August 16, 1948 in Bordeaux, France. His father was an admiral.

Le Bitoux worked as a substitute music teacher.

Le Bitoux founded the Front homosexuel d'action révolutionnaire (FHAR) in Nice in the 1970s. By 1978, he ran for the National Assembly as a "homosexual candidate" alongside Guy Hocquenghem; they lost the election. A year later, in 1979, he founded Gai pied, the first mainstream gay magazine in France; its name was found by philosopher Michel Foucault. However, he stepped down in 1983 due to its consumerist turn.

Le Bitoux joined AIDES, an HIV/AIDS awareness non-profit organization, in 1985. He co-wrote many HIV prevention documents. He was the editor-in-chief of the Journal du Sida, a publication about HIV/AIDS.

Le Bitoux founded Le Mémorial de la Déportation Homosexuelle, a non-profit organization for the remembrance of homosexuals victims of Nazi Germany during World War II, in 1989. Initially, the organization was met with homophobia from some Holocaust survivors, who wrongly feared they were being smeared. In 1994, Le Bitoux co-authored the memoir of Pierre Seel, a French homosexual who was deported by the Nazis for being gay. By the 1990s, Le Bitoux argued that anti-LGBT legislations in France harked back to laws devised by François Darlan of the Vichy government to end same-sex prostitution in 1942, not Nazi Germany. However, Marc Boninchi, a Law professor at the University of Lyon, has argued that the first instance of legal discrimination dates back to prosecutor Charles Dubost's 1941 recommendations. Meanwhile, Le Bitoux's 2002 Les oubliés de la mémoire led President Jacques Chirac to acknowledge the homosexual victims of World War II.