French culture minister denies paying boys for sex

PARIS — France’s culture minister denied Thursday paying boys for sex, in an impassioned response to critics on the right and left demanding that he resign over a candid book recounting encounters with male prostitutes in Thailand.

“I condemn sexual tourism, which is a disgrace. I condemn pedophilia, which I have never in any way participated in,” Frederic Mitterrand, 62, nephew of late President Francois Mitterrand, said in a national prime time television interview.

“All those who accuse me of this kind of thing should be ashamed.”

In a 2005 book, “La mauvaise vie” or “The Bad Life,” Mitterrand describes Bangkok’s brothels in rich, torrid detail, and the joy and freedom of paying “boys” for sex.

On Thursday, Mitterrand said on TF1 television that the book was not a strict autobiography. He admitted to “errors” in paying for sex in the past, but said he had relations only with men his age.

The exploits described in the book came back to haunt him recently, after he jumped to the defense of filmmaker Roman Polanski. Polanski is currently in a Swiss prison on U.S. charges relating to his sexual relations with a 13-year-old girl in 1977, when he was 43.

As excerpts of Mitterrand’s book circulated publicly in France this week, a cascade of political figures called for him to quit or be fired after a leader of the far-right National Front launched a tirade on television against Mitterrand and read excerpts from the 4-year-old book.

Mitterrand shot back firmly Thursday, saying he had no intention of leaving the government. He said he spoke to President Nicolas Sarkozy — who has not spoken publicly about the book — Thursday morning and Sarkozy “confirmed his confidence” in the culture minister.

The affair is awkward for France and especially Sarkozy, whose embrace of figures outside the conservative fold such as Mitterrand has upset the governing UMP party. Mitterrand’s critics say it’s about child sex tourism, which France’s government is campaigning against. But it also involves a politician’s sex life, which many French consider private business, and a public figure’s recognition of his homosexuality.

“We must not confuse pedophilia and homosexuality,” Mitterrand said on TF1, visibly upset by days of high-profile criticism.

He said his book was neither a memoir nor a novel. “I preferred to leave things vague,” he said.

Asked whether he made a mistake in paying for sex in Thailand with “boys,” he said: “An error, without a doubt. A crime, no.”

“Each time I was with people who were my age, or who were five years younger — there wasn’t the slightest ambiguity — and who were consenting,” he said.

He has said that he uses the term “boys” loosely, in his life and in the book.

The far-right National Front party says it went looking for dirt on Mitterrand after his praise for Polanski.

“Frederic Mitterrand must resign because his presence in the government as a representative of France is an indelible stain (for) the entire world,” National Front Vice President Marine Le Pen said Thursday. Le Pen triggered the controversy earlier this week.

Leftists joined in. Socialist Arnaud Montebourg said Thursday that Mitterrand “deliberately acted in violation of national and international laws” and appealed to Sarkozy and Prime Minister Francois Fillon to fire him.

“It is impossible that a minister representing France can encourage violation of his own international commitments to fight sexual tourism,” Montebourg’s statement said.

In the book, written in the first person, Mitterrand’s narrator describes being taunted in childhood by peers and being troubled by his attraction to other boys.

In Bangkok, surrounded by “boys” or “kids” who tell him in broken English “I want you happy,” he finds a liberty he never had when he was a child.

“Money and sex, I am at the heart of my system, that which is functioning at last, because I know that no one will refuse me. … I can at last choose. The Western morality, the endless guilt, the shame that I drag with me, shatter,” one passage reads.

France Police, a minority police union, announced plans Thursday to seek a judicial investigation against Mitterrand under part of the penal code that makes it a crime to frequent prostitutes who are minors.

The book raised no more than literary eyebrows when it was published, and it drew little attention when Mitterrand was named to the government in June. Until he became France’s guardian of culture, Mitterrand was known primarily as a television personality who made eloquent profiles of the famous.

The culture minister’s uncle, President Mitterrand, was a classic example of the hands-off policy applied to politicians’ private lives by the French media and his colleagues, many aware for years of his daughter born out of wedlock — and whom he introduced to the nation before dying of cancer.

Associated Press writer Elaine Ganley contributed to this report.