Despite achieving legal equality, LGBTQ people continue to face many unique challenges. But in 2013, same-sex marriage was finally legalized, inspiring hundreds of thousands of Parisians to flood the streets to celebrate. Twenty years later, the city elected its first openly gay mayor whose tenure was defined by contentious protests both for and against the marriage equality movement. This volatile time of organization and protest led the way to Paris’s first official pride march at the start of the following decade, in June 1981. Organizations with names like Homosexual Front for Revolutionary Action and Red Dykes pushed for LGBTQ recognition and an end to discrimination in France. Paris became a hotbed for gay liberation groups, similar to those forming in the US and Great Britain. The queer scene reemerged from the shadows in the early 1970s. But the Nazi invasion of 1940 and the establishment of Vichy France ushered in conservative legislation and major setbacks, forcing the LGBTQ community to withdraw underground. The bohemian spirit of prior decades set the stage for Paris to become one of the major centers for queer life in the world. Gender-bending was the zeitgeist: Women donned tuxedos, and men wore flamboyant frocks to raucous affairs in the neighborhoods of Les Halles and Montmartre. The 1920s saw the first gay clubs and drag balls.

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