According to a survey released Wednesday by Hornet, a gay social network, 36.5 percent back Le Pen, while 63.5 percent favor former Socialist Party member and reputed centrist Emmanuel Macron, 39. Among Hornet's younger subscribers, 43.5 percent of 18-to-29-year-olds want Le Pen — and fully 49 percent of those age 25.
While Le Pen surely would appreciate even higher numbers, pundits are surprised that the so-called far-Right candidate does this well with typically Left-leaning voters. Why? Le Pen's previously hostile party now welcomes gays, and militant-Islamic attacks inside and outside of France have ushered gays into Le Pen's largely open arms.
Le Pen has "un-demonized" the National Front by distancing herself from the party's founder (her anti-Semitic father), appealing to Jewish voters, avoiding mass protests against gay marriage (although her party's platform promises to scrap it), and choosing gay men Florian Philippot as her chief deputy and Sébastien Chenu as her leading adviser.
These efforts have boosted the party among gay voters. In April 2012's presidential election, 26 percent of gay Parisians picked Le Pen. She scored just 16 percent of the straight vote. A third of gays who married after same-sex nuptials were legalized in 2013 reportedly voted for her party in 2015's regional contests.
Many of these "homonationalists," as they've been dubbed, applaud Le Pen's straight talk about Islamic fundamentalism's existential challenge to French lives and lifestyles.
In light of the November 2015 ISIS terror attacks that killed 130 in Paris, Tunisian immigrant Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel's truck rampage that murdered 86 pedestrians in Nice last July and other acts of extremist bloodshed, Le Pen said, "Islamism is a monstrous totalitarian ideology that has declared war on our nation, on reason, on civilization." She also wants to renew border checks and eject foreigners who are on France's terror-watch list.
Violent Muslim-extremist homophobia has battered France for years:
- Then-Mayor Bertrand Delanoë of Paris was stabbed in the stomach by Azedine Berkane, a devout Muslim and son of Algerian immigrants, at City Hall in October 2002. Delanoë survived after two weeks in the hospital. According to justice officials, Berkane "explained his strong religious views made him reject homosexuality as unnatural."
- "Up until 2005, Bordeaux was a very gay-friendly city," Patrick McCarthy told Britain's The Spectator. "Same-sex couples could openly walk down the street holding hands without any problems," the Bordeaux resident continued. "However, in the space of two months, five gay men were murdered in the city. The blame was put on Bordeaux's Muslim community, since some of these hate crimes were carried out by people of Arabic origins."
- In April 2013, Dutch librarian Wilfred de Bruijn and his boyfriend, Olivier Couderc, strolled arm in arm after dinner in a highly Muslim district in Paris. "Hey, look. They're gays," Couderc recalled hearing before attackers pounced. They kicked de Bruijn in the face, delivered five cranial fractures, knocked out a tooth, and left both men unconscious. Three men of North African heritage paid for this carnage in June 2014. K. Taieb and M. Abdel Malik, both 19, earned 2½-year prison terms. T. Kide, 21, received six months' probation for not stopping this brutality.
- When the ISIS-tied Karim Cheurfi fired his Kalashnikov on Paris' Champs-Élyseés on April 20, he killed Xavier Jugelé, 37, an openly gay cop. Cheurfi most likely knew nothing about Jugelé's sexuality, but he nonetheless made Jugelé yet another gay victim of France's Islamic-extremist mayhem.
Deroy Murdock is a Fox News contributor and a contributing editor with National Review Online.
Reader Comments
My partner told me that there was no one in his country that was Muslim that wouldnt see that a gay person be punished to death. There was even a manhunt for him instigated by his parents. They didnt find him he never has and never will reconcile with his family. They vow to find him someday to carry out the deed. He lives his life in constant fear and is terrified of these mass migrant immigrants. He says none should be allowed and i tend to agree with his assessment from many things ive seen and heard from frank speaking Muslims.
Muslims do not want to integrate under our social rules and culture - theyd rather just out number us and force us under Sharia law, taxing non muslims if slaughtering them is not doable til such time they can rid themselves of infidels. But make no mistake-gays and others they deem most vile and blasphemous, and all those that freely speak about the dangers of Islam or its prophet - they will be the first led to slaughter. Lets not forget how Muslims have created ghettos where police will not enter. Muslims outpace all others in the west in regards to population growth and with Islam well on its way to becoming the number one in religious devotees the future may end up more bleak than anything the dystopian nightmare of a NWO could ever. Or maybe that is the plan-Apparently they DO want a one world government, ow currency, ow religion, ow banking system, etc. Maybe Islam is a part of the plan and theyd have no problem with culling the human population of undesirables.
Islam is not peaceful The Koran reads like a book of war.
Our leaders in their determined agenda to fill their pockets have fooled us by using politcal correctness (who wants to be a racist and smeared?) and has us supporting what will surely doom us all...
O ooohh. Fear Fear Fear.
What's more dangerous are highly excitable dickheads who are easily swept along by clash-of-civilisations-wheeler-dealer rhetoric. Present company not excepted.
Marine Le Pen is obvious friend-of-Dorothy-material regardless of fake anti-gay 'crimewaves' assembled by irresponsible journalists looking for their next big hit.
I guess that man should have feared "highly excitable dickheads who are easily swept along by clash-of-civilisations-wheeler-dealer rhetoric" instead of the guillotine that beheaded him last month in Saudi Arabia
Chechnya opens world's first concentration camp for homosexuals since Hitler's in the 1930s where campaigners say gay men are being tortured with electric shocks and beaten to death [Link]
Those stupid gays locked in concentration camps being tortured with electric shocks to death should know that there is nothing to fear in Islam and that instead they should be fearing "highly excitable dickheads who are easily swept along by clash-of-civilisations-wheeler-dealer rhetoric". If only they had watched a Highland Fleet Lute lecture before they were taken to the concentration camps, then they would know what the right thing to fear is!
This stupid woman should know that there is nothing to fear from Islam, she should instead be fearing "highly excitable dickheads who are easily swept along by clash-of-civilisations-wheeler-dealer rhetoric", because Highland Fleet Lute says so.