France: An investigation launched after an LGBT+ singer’s church concert was cancelled

An investigation has been opened into “threats” and “incitement to hatred” in France after a concert by a singer, a standard-bearer for the LGBT+ community, was canceled, which should have been held on Wednesday in a former church in the east of the country. . Country.

Bilal Hassani, France’s former Eurovision representative, had given up performing on Wednesday at a church in Metz after it had been desecrated for 500 years and turned into an auditorium under pressure from local Catholic and traditionalist movements that denounced the “desecration” during Holy Week.

Threats against the 23-year-old singer, an LGBT icon in France, prompted the Metz prosecutor’s office to open a judicial investigation against X, which also targeted acts of “incitement to hatred” and “committing a crime or crime” for sexual orientation

In this case, the associations “Stop Homophobia and Moss” also filed a complaint against the association of traditional Catholics Civitas for discrimination based on gender identity.

After the concert was cancelled, the right-wing mayor of Metz, François Grosdier, denounced that Bilal Hassani’s tour producer, the multinational Live Nation, had succumbed to “a form of intellectual terrorism, to the detriment of culture”.

Another concert hit the headlines in France recently. In June 2021, singer Eddie De Brito, who came out as gay in 2017, was targeted by a cyberbullying campaign after performing at the Parisian church of Saint-Eustache and performing one of his songs where he uses the term “sodomy”.

In December 2022, 11 people who participated in this cyberbullying were given suspended sentences of between three and six months in prison in Paris.