France

Public opinion in France on LGBTIQ people is generally accepting, while laws on gender and sexual diversity are relatively progressive. Discrimination, hate crimes, and hate speech on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity are illegal, and same-sex couples may marry and adopt. In 2024, Gabriel Attal was appointed as the first openly gay prime minister in France, and other lesbian, gay, bisexual, and trans politicians have held government posts or elected office at lower levels. However, discrimination and homophobic hate crimes are on the rise. Anti-LGBT+ offenses have been increasing by 14 percent every year since 2016, according to the Interior Ministry. The growing political influence of the far right has amplified and normalized anti-LGBTIQ political rhetoric. The far-right Rassemblement National, in 2023, launched an anti-LGBTIQ group in the French National Assembly to oppose the “poisons of wokism,” referring to gender-inclusive writing, so-called LGBTIQ propaganda in schools, and the participation of trans women in women’s sports.

France was the first country to declassify gender dysphoria as a mental illness in 2010, and transgender people in France may change their legal gender markers without undergoing medical intervention. In 2025, the French National Authority for Health recognized the principle of self-determination in its first guidelines on gender-affirming care. However, the process to change legal gender markers is not based on self-determination. It involves a court proceeding, wherein the applicant must demonstrate that they have been publicly presenting as their gender and recognized by family, friends, or colleagues as such. Nonbinary genders are not recognized. In 2024, President Macron referred to “going to the town hall to change sex” as “grotesque.”

In 2021, the French Parliament passed a law enabling single women and lesbian couples to pursue medically assisted reproduction. In 2022, it passed a law prohibiting conversion practices, which adopts a carceral approach and does not establish preventive measures to address root causes. France has no laws protecting the bodily integrity of intersex persons.