Strasbourg denies a gay man the right to adopt
A gay Parisian wants to adopt a child. Strasbourg says no and only corrects itself six years later.
On 26 February 2002, the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg announced a ruling that was a bitter setback for gay men and lesbians in Europe. The applicant was Philippe Fretté, a single Parisian born in 1954. He wanted to adopt a child. French law expressly allowed single people to adopt. But in 1993 the Paris social services authority refused him the necessary prior approval.
Officially, the authority based its decision on Fretté's "lifestyle". What it meant was his homosexuality. The authorities acknowledged his personal qualities and his ability to raise a child. But it was questionable, they said, whether his situation as a single homosexual man was compatible with a child's welfare. The Conseil d'État, France's highest administrative court, upheld this position.
In Strasbourg, the judges openly acknowledged that sexual orientation had been the decisive factor. Yet they found no discrimination. Science was still divided on the consequences of adoption by homosexual parents, the majority argued. States therefore had a wide margin of appreciation. The result could hardly have been closer: by four votes to three, the chamber found no violation of the prohibition of discrimination. Fretté won only on a side issue, because he had not been summoned to the hearing before the Conseil d'État.
The ruling did not stand for very long. In January 2008, the Grand Chamber ruled on the case of a lesbian teacher from the French Jura, who had also been refused adoption by the authorities. This time, ten of the seventeen judges saw discrimination. If the law allowed single people to adopt, sexual orientation could not be the deciding factor. Experts regarded the decision as a de facto departure from Fretté. But the U-turn no longer changed anything in his own case.