Guy Sorman wasn't Foucault's friend, and later said (about his statement) that he never actually saw anything he described, but just a 'convergence of disturbing clues'. You have to bear in mind that accusing gay people of pedophilia is pretty standard fare for homophobes up and to this day.
IIRC Focault still signed a petition to legalize sex with children. Not sure why, but it wasn't an entirely unpopular opinion among (often) leftist intellectuals in Europe at the time.
Foucault (and others) wanted to be rid of the law because (a) it seemed incoherent to hold minors to be responsible for crimes while denying them agency in matters of sex, (b) he did not think minors were automatically unable to give consent and that a test of maturity should be used instead, (c) the law was discriminatory and gave different consent ages for homo- and heterosexual sex, (d) historical precedent showed that laws about sex became more and more restrictive, and he did not want any law at all to be specifically about sex, and (e) it was his mission to challenge power structures, so he may have been trolling a bit, or at least making a point to give power a good sweat.
I mean, it seems a bit unclear what his political positions actually were, but it does seem they were just opinions. As philosophers go, that's pretty small beer: Thales used to roast people alive in a brass container, Marcus Aurelius was responsible for numerous genocides, and Heidegger was a card-carrying Nazi.
Foucault, Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir and Jacques Derrida signed a petition to decriminalise pedophilia [0]. The age of consent at that time in France was 15.
"In a sense, all the rest of my life I've been trying to do intellectual
things that would attract beautiful boys."
That article says they were probably teenagers, not young children.
> After interviewing residents of Sidi Bou Said who had known the philosopher, his report concluded: "Michel Foucault was not a paedophile, but he was seduced by the young Ephebes."
Not exactly vindicating, but not the same level of horror, I suppose. It's not exactly a crazy idea given Foucault's own words quoted elsewhere in this thread.
Guy Sorman wasn't Foucault's friend, and later said (about his statement) that he never actually saw anything he described, but just a 'convergence of disturbing clues'. You have to bear in mind that accusing gay people of pedophilia is pretty standard fare for homophobes up and to this day.