Following the introduction of a bill that seeks to compensate the victims of past anti-gay laws, justice minister Eric Dupond-Moretti issued an apology “on behalf of the French Republic”. “Sorry to the people – the homosexual people of France – who, for 40 years, suffered this totally unfair repression,” he said. Homosexuality was decriminalised in France in 1791 during the French Revolution. However, an unequal age of consent was introduced by the Nazi-backed Vichy government during World War Two, raising the age of consent to 21 for same-sex sexual activity. It was eventually equalised in 1982. LGBTQ+ people in France were also persecuted in the latter half of the 20th century under a public indecency law introduced in 1960.