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Italian Gays March for Equality

Author: Jonty Skrufff (Skrufff.com)
Saturday, June 14, 2003
Up to 50,000 Italian homosexuals marched at last weekend's Gay Pride parade in Bari, Southern Italy to challenge the enormous homophobia that permeates the whole country. According to the Observer, just 100,000 out of an estimated 5million gay Italians admit to being gay, due to disapproval of the catholic church, anti-gay right wing groups and the country's still ubiquitous macho culture.

"People are still afraid, as if we were in a police state," Franco Grillini, the president of Rome based gay movement Arcigay, told the paper.

"When you live in the Vatican's back garden, you can't change anything fast."

The march came months after a new men's group The Italian Association of House-husbands' formed in Northern Italy, dedicated to emancipating men by teaching them domestic skills.

"We have realised that the image of the macho Italian man is all wrong, it always has been, society got it wrong," Fiorenzo Bresciani told the Observer last month.

"There are enormous numbers of Italians who want to look after themselves, not to be dependent on women. And there are others dying to reveal their feminine side, but think it would bring too much shame," he suggested.
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