Emmanuel Macron calls rumours that he is secretly gay ‘misogynistic and homophobic’
The French President-elect Emmanuel Macron, has called rumours that he is secretly gay “odious misogynistic and homophobic”.
The 39-year-old who won the election last week to become the President-elect, said the rumours affected his wife Brigitte Trogneux, 64, who he got married to back in 2007.
Mr Macron reveals the response to the rumours in the TF1 documentary ‘Behind the Scenes of a Victory’.
He said the rumours revealed “two odious things: on one side misogyny because they say it’s not possible to be with a woman who is 24 years older.
“That’s how I’ve always lived because I’ve been with my wife for 20 years. And on the other side, it’s homophobic.”
The couple met when Brigitte was Mr Macron’s drama teacher in Amiens, when the President-elect was a teenager.
He was sent away to Paris but married Brigitte years later.
A former Danish MP this week branded France’s President-elect Emmanuel Macron a “pretty little gay boy” in a live TV interview.
He was also described as a “gay psychopath” by a best-selling Russian newspaper.
Mr Macron is set to take office this month after his victory over far-right Front National leader Marine Le Pen.
The centrist leader was subjected to repeated homophobic smears on the campaign trail.
Macron, a supporter of LGBT rights, dedicated an entire section of his manifesto to LGBT issues.
In it he pledged to challenge homophobic in everyday life, and to tackle anti-LGBT discrimination in the workplace.
The candidate said he would scale up random checks of employers’ compliance with equality laws, while also “naming and shaming” those found to have discriminated.
He also promises to defend progress on equal marriage, hailing the law as a “fundamental achievement” of the past five years and an “an enrichment of what the family is in France that shows its importance to all of us”.
