PARIS - France’s culture minister yesterday denied 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 François Mitterrand, said in a national prime-time television interview.
In a 2005 book, “La mauvaise vie’’ or “The Bad Life,’’ Mitterrand describes Bangkok’s brothels in rich, torrid detail, and extols the joys of paying “boys’’ for sex.
Yesterday, Mitterrand said 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 and often uses the term “boys’’ loosely.
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 US charges related to his rape of 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 the culture minister 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 four-year-old book.
Mitterrand shot back firmly yesterday, saying he had no intention of leaving the government. He said he talked to President Nicolas Sarkozy - who has not spoken publicly about the book - yesterday morning and Sarkozy “confirmed his confidence’’ in the culture minister.
“We must not confuse pedophilia and homosexuality,’’ Mitterrand said in his remarks yesterday, adding that his book was neither memoir nor novel: “I preferred to leave things vague.’’
