LGBT rights still a fight in Italy, by Dario Pio Muccilli

Italy’s LGBT community is in turmoil because of a great controversy a would-be law is causing. The DDL Zan (DDL stands for decree) is a bill which would create new categories of crime based on sexual and gender discrimination, adding to the already existing hate crimes punished by the Italian state.

Alessandro Zan, the signatory of the law and an MP, has pushed all the people from the LGBT community to publicly support his efforts. As a result, students, TV anchors, broadcasts, writers, artists and musicians have created momentum in favor of what would be a historic law.

Opponents to this would-be revolution are the right-wing parties including the Brothers of Italy and the League. They are strong in the Italian Senate are filibustering in every possible place. The traditionalist electorate claim the law is against liberty and promotes a “gender ideology”.

The issue of free-speech, a basic value for any democracy, is disputed by both sides. An article was added by Zan’s side in order not to punish those who believe traditional family is the only one possible or that a gay couple is not able to raise children.

What is striking is that the usual Italian gay organizations played only a minor role in the whole scenario. ArciGay and GayLib are the organizations that usually represent gays of the center-left and the center-right.

ArciGay is actually way more older and well-structured than GayLib and the LGBT community in the country is mainly leftist, but ArciGay failed to play the role of protagonist.

This, according to Davide Betti Balducci, former GayLib coordinator, is due to the “fact that both the groups have become very political and are more interested in moving LGBT voters to certain parties rather than those parties to the LGBT voters, leading to an erosion of the trust towards them.”

As a consequence, many gay activists went it alone or directly through center-left parties. Today in the Italian scenario it is possible to see different LGBT activists separated by political divisions across the community.

While that might be easily regarded as normal in every community and indeed witness the evolution of it, there are some activists who last January founded the Gay Party.

Davide Betti Balducci was one of them and in his mind it is clear why they had to do so. “What we aimed to do is lobby, as in every civil nation. Many times they (the traditionalists) accuse us of having built a secret lobby to influence the media and the parties in favour of gay rights. They’ve said such lies for ages to such an extent that eventually we decided to do so, but publicly. You may say that other organizations still exist now, but being politically committed they represent in my opinion almost the 2 or 3% percent of the LGBT people, as regarded as the politicized one, that is not our would-be-electorate”.

Indeed one of the catchy sentences the party uses for its campaign is “who are secretly gay will have the opportunity to do their coming out at the polls” and the party’s efforts seem to be directed towards a centrist LGBT electorate who often does not even come out as gay. “In the future we may reach 6% of the votes” Balducci says.

However, despite the calls for unity “Lgbt people should not be divided because they’re a family,” Betti Balducci doesn’t hide a certain discontent towards the usual LGBT associative realities which he portrays as “those who will be more in difficulty with our liberal revolution, because we will prompt them to work properly as they didn’t for years”.

This hostility is also visible by the lack of direct support to the Party from ArciGay or GayLib, whose silence has been incredibly loud. Betti Balducci argues that the main difference is that his party wants to change the way LGBT community communicates to the heterosexual or traditional public by using a more moderate and compromised language “because those Italians will be otherwise scared”.

Indeed, Italy is a country where  gay marriage or gay adoption is not yet legal and gays still suffer prejudice in society, especially in the lower classes. The strategy according to Betti Balducci should not be disruptive, but moderate, even if he totally agrees that both marriage and adoption should be achieved.

Obviously the political outcomes of such a practical commitment are a bet, as many Gay activists still prefer to be part of great parties rather than go on a party which, in Betti’s own words, houses people nonetheless of their political thoughts. That’s probably the reason why the party has not a precise economic policy, as it is clear when, asked about how the State should spend money coming from the European Union, Betti decides not to answer the question.

The danger in creating a party labelled gay is to ghettoize a community regardless of divergent political views. Being gay is not a parameter for a common political view as it is not so being heterosexual, and creating a lobby is far different from being a Party with political responsibilities.

Anyway, the party may effectively manage to have success. Italian politics has housed hundreds of parties in the latest decades and there’s plenty of space for another one, but it is indeed a pity for the LGBT community itself that during such a crucial period of its history a division is set between different activists about how to attain  their civil rights.