Against a portion of queer activism, Arnaud Abel defends universalism and secularism without yielding to the far right. This hard-line centrist maintains this balancing act at the head of his association Citizen Pride.
Photography: Antoine Doyen / Mirage Collective for têtu·
Arnaud Abel is no revolutionary. This 52-year-old Parisian civil servant even admits a certain allergy to radicalism. Yet, since he has led Citizen Pride, an LGBT+ association founded on universalism, secularism and other republican values, he finds himself at the heart of a battle tearing apart queer activism. Allowed to march in the Paris Pride in 2023, his association is now excluded, due to a digital feud with members of Inter-LGBT.
As far back as he can remember, political moderation has always been part of the landscape. Born in Vannes (Morbihan), the eldest of three children of parents who worked in a watchmaking workshop, he grows up in a center-right, Christian but lightly practiced and not particularly conservative family. One day, his mother is indeed surprised to find a têtu· in his teenage backpack, but his homosexuality does not provoke a family upheaval. “My father sulked for twenty-four hours, then he moved on,” he recalls.
His career follows the same straight path. After studying law at the Nantes Regional Administration Institute, he enters the civil service and passes through the ministries of Health, Budget and Justice, with social policies as the through line. Since April, he has been working at the Ministry of Agriculture. “I have always been interested in public action, where you can see very concretely the execution of decisions.” In the corridors of the administration, he also notes the gap between certain promises and the complexity of files, as well as the chronic incapacity of politicians to invest in the long term, notably on ecology. With a consequence that worries him: the rise of populists, a label he attributes to both the National Rally (RN) and La France Insoumise (LFI).
He ends up crossing to the other side of the barrier. As the 2020 municipal elections approached, a friend drew him into Gaspard Gantzer’s Paris project. When the former advisor to François Hollande withdrew his candidacy, Arnaud Abel joined Cédric Villani’s team. Two years later, it is his own shaved head, his black glasses and his three-day beard that appear on posters for the legislative elections, under the banner of the Union of Centrists and Ecologists, a small party that then supported Emmanuel Macron. He knew he would not win and congratulates himself on not finishing last. “It was a wonderful experience. I learned to defend my opinions in constructive political debates.”
Forbidden from Pride
It is at this moment that Citizen Pride is born. On a Telegram loop, Arnaud Abel and a few friends reflect on how to bring universalism and secularism back to the heart of queer activism. Their founding op-ed, published in 2022, aims to reply to a double threat: “anti-LGBT hate” and, “in mirror, the radicalization of a minority from this broad community, seduced by identity and victimhood ideologies that oppose our republican model”.
The association specifically claims not to abandon the principles of universalism and secularism, today contested by a portion of the radical left. “Secularism protects the LGBT, he calmly objects. You know many countries governed by religious authorities, whether Islamist or evangelical, where the rights of women and LGBT people progress?”
For the 120th anniversary of the 1905 law, the association designed an exhibition in Paris on the topic. “This is about waking the community to the risk of regression,” continues Arnaud Abel. “By repeatedly waving fights that are not ours, radical militants feed our enemies.” He cites as an example the “omerta” on homophobia in certain working-class neighborhoods: “Refusing to name it leaves the field free to the far right, which instrumentalizes it in order to win votes from the community.”
Because even though he rails against part of the new queer militancy, Arnaud Abel does not miss an opportunity to highlight the hypocrisy of the RN on LGBTQI+ issues. When Jean-Philippe Tanguy, deputy for the Somme, defends towns that shelve the rainbow flag, he challenges him on X: “The fight against LGBTphobias is OK only if it serves your xenophobic agenda.” To Bruno Clavet, the deputy for Pas-de-Calais, present at the “festival of tolerance and the fight against homophobia” organized by his party in Hénin-Beaumont, he says: “Are you fighting homophobia at the RN, is that new?”
Since January 2025, on social networks, the anonymous account Le Coin des LGBT, which had made a name for itself by compiling news before taking a strongly militant turn, nonetheless labels the association a “groupuscule d’extrême droite”. In a succession of tweets presented as an “inquiry,” its author reproaches Arnaud Abel for his positions against the expression “people who menstruate,” his denunciation of “Islamist entryism,” but also the op-eds published by his association in Marianne, Le Point, L’Express, Charlie Hebdo and even… têtu·.
This ostracism has a concrete effect. After marching in 2023, Citizen Pride was refused access to the Paris Pride parade in 2025. The organizing association accuses its members of online harassment toward its volunteers. In June, once again, Inter-LGBT added to the previous grievance a problem in the registration procedure. “The exclusion from Pride was very difficult for our members,” acknowledges Arnaud Abel, who sees in it “a maneuver to delegitimize and censor to prevent the debate.” Not discouraged, he muses: “To campaign in the LGBT milieu, you have to have thick skin!”.
