Everyone has the right to respect for his private life.

That’s what’s written in the French Civil Code. The French take private life seriously, especially concerning relationships and sex.

Respecting another’s private life does not necessarily require secrecy. Magazines routinely carry stories, with photographs, that show a television journalist strolling with her boyfriend, or a musician on a beach with his girlfriend. Just as routinely, the featured celebrities sue the magazines. And they win damages for violation of respect for private life. For the magazines, it’s a cost of doing business.

Respect is also an ethical position: expressing curiosity or looking at the lives of others is acceptable –magazines run features on celebrities because this satisfies readers’ demand– but making fun of or belittling others is not. Respect means that we give others the benefit of the doubt, or that we reserve judgment, or that we express judgment discreetly.

The French president and his circle certainly lead colorful lives:

  • Nicolas Sarkozy met his second wife, Cecilia, at her wedding (to her first husband). Cecilia later left Nicolas, then returned, then left again; the couple divorced. A few months later, Sarkozy married his third wife, Carla Bruni.
  • Carla Bruni had a child with her boyfriend’s son, who was married when they met.
  • Rachida Dati, the former justice minister now eager to become the next mayor of Paris, gave birth to a daughter early this year. No one apart from Dati seems to know who the father is, and Dati is silent on this point. Rumors abound.

Colorful lives are not reserved for conservatives. Former president François Mitterrand had, for decades, maintained two households, one official, the other not.

President Mitterrand’s nephew, Frédéric Mitterrand, made the news this week. Frederic Mitterrand became well-known as a television presenter; his voice will be familiar to people who’ve seen the film “Amélie” (Mitterrand did a voice-over during an imaginary funeral for Amélie Poulain). He later headed the prestigious Villa Medici, a state-sponsored artists’ colony in Rome. Earlier this year, he became the French culture minister.

Mitterrand has become controversial because he made his private life public, and because people took note.

In 2005, Mitterrand penned a book, La mavaise vie (The Bad Life), which I assume was inspired by Pedro Almodovar’s film, “La mala educación” (Bad Education), that had opened the 2004 Cannes Film Festival. In a chapter of his book, Mitterrand recounts visiting brothels in Thailand, where “young boys” were “immediately available”, for a fee. The book sold reasonably well. (I haven’t read it.)

Mitterrand did some promotional work, and television programs from 2005 (that I have seen) show interviewers, eyebrows raised, quizzing Mitterrand about sex tourism and seeking out minors for paid sex. Mitterrand said, “I have nothing to hide” and seemed to play down the issues. But he seemed to insist on the veracity of his story and its autobiographical form; he did not explain it as a work of fiction whose source was his imagination alone, in other words, as literature. (By comparison, former French president Giscard d’Estaing’s latest work, a romance between a former French president and Lady Di, has been acknowledged by its author as a wholly imagined fantasy.) Mitterrand’s account is his private life, made public.

No one in the conservative camp seems to have remembered any of this when Mitterrand was appointed; or if they did, they played it down.

This state of affairs changed Monday night, during a talk show, “Sex Crimes: How to Prevent Recidivism”. Marine Le Pen, a far-right National Front party leader and the daughter of the 2002 candidate for the French presidency, read from Mitterrand’s La mauvaise vie on the air. (An excerpt has been posted on YouTube.)

Le Pen’s point was that the conservative government cannot credibly combat recidivism among sex predators while its culture minister luridly describes seeking out sexual partners for a fee in exotic locales.

I don’t think that Le Pen or subsequent commentators criticized Mitterrand because his preferred sex partners are male; Mitterrand is openly gay, and most French people seem untroubled by this. After seeing the video excerpt a couple of times, I also don’t think that Le Pen is belittling Mitterrand personally; her point seems to be that Mitterrand has no place in the government, not that his rightful place is in jail or in exile.

The talk show audience was disturbed and silent. Since Monday night, the level of discomfort has grown. Many call for Mitterrand’s resignation, and I expect that he will resign. My expectation has less to do with his private-life-made-public than with the absurd prospect of the culture minister seeking to punish file sharing while downplaying sex tourism.