Tag Archives: Italy

Gay History – July 9, 1550: Italian Humanist and Historian Jacopo Bonfadio Convicted of Sodomy and Beheaded.

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Jacopo Bonfadio was born in Garda, Italy in 1508 and was educated at Verona and Padua.

Beginning in 1532, he worked as a secretary for various members of the clergy in Rome and Naples. In 1540, he gained employment in Padua with the son of Cardinal-humanist Pietro Bembo. While working for Bembo’s son, he met and became friends with notable humanists of the time and was a contemporary of Annibal Caro. 

In 1541, Bonfadio among others, coined the term una terza natura, meaning ‘nature improved by art’, and subsequently, many designers utilized the concept. Large-scale views of the Medici villas, the grand vistas of Louis XIV, and the planning of 16th-century and later English country houses show how this idea was incorporated.

Bonfadio’s humanist views earned him some powerful enemies in Genoa. In 1550, after he had completed Annales Genuendis, ab anno 1528 recuperatae libertatis usque ad annum 1550 (his history of the Republic of Genoa from 1528 to 1550), his writings angered the powerful Genoese families the Dorias, the Adornos, the Spinolas, and the Fieschi, who sought revenge against him for daring to record and judge their actions. They proceeded to accuse him of sodomy, for which he was arrested, tried, and condemned to death.

Bonfadio was beheaded, and his body was burnt.

Unfortunately, the minutes of his trial have been lost forever.

Gay men and lesbians have been persecuted beaten, tortured, institutionalized, jailed and murdered for many centuries and still are to this very day.

Gay History – May 7, 1365: 15-Year-Old Giovanni di Giovanni Tortured and Killed for the Crime of Sodomy in Italy

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Giovanni di Giovanni (1350 – 1365) is one of the youngest victims of the campaign against homosexuality waged in 14th-century Florence., Italy.

Giovanni’s persecution came on the heels of the Black Death, the bubonic plague epidemic which had ravaged the city two years earlier. Some of the most influential people of the religious establishment, such as Bernardino of Siena, blamed sodomites for having brought the wrath of God down on the heads of the populace. The “remedy” they promoted was to purify the city of evil by means of fire, leading to burnings at the stake and other punishments (red-hot iron) such as that suffered by poor young boy.

Di Giovanni was labeled “a public and notorious passive sodomite” and convicted by the Podestà court of being the passive partner of a number of different men. His punishment was to be paraded on the back of an ass, then to be publicly castrated. Finally, he was to have his anus burned with a red-hot iron (or, as the sentence read: “[punished] in that part of the body where he allowed himself to be known in sodomitical practice”) 

He did not survive the ordeal.

So as you can see extremist Christians have blamed the misfortune and disasters that fell upon them on homosexuals for centuries and we have been persecuted and murdered us because of their hatred and bigotry. 

And some still do till this very day.

Gay History: April 16, 1453 – Leonardo da Vinci is Born Near Florence, Italy.

Gay History: April 16, 1453 – Leonardo da Vinci is Born Near Florence, Italy.

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April 16, 1453 – Leonardo da Vinc an Italian polymath of the High Renaissance who was active as a painter, draughtsman, engineer, scientist, theorist, sculptor, and architecti is born near Florence, Italy.

When he was 24 was Leonardo was accused of having sex with a 17-year-old youth of “questionable” background.

Along with three other young men, he was anonymously accused of sodomy, which in Florence was a criminal offense, even though in most cases the authorities looked the other way and the general culture attached little social stigma to homosexuality.

The accusation specifically charged him with a homosexual interaction with one Jacopo Saltarelli, a notorious prostitute. The charges were brought in April, and for a time Leonardo and the other defendants were under the watchful eye of Florence’s “Officers of the Night“–a kind of renaissance vice squad.

However, the charges were dismissed in June, due to a lack of witnesses and evidence. It is probable that the Medici family brought had something to do with this outcome, as another of the defendants was Lionardo de Tornabuoni, and Lorenzo de Medici’s mother had been a Tornabuoni.

DaVinci never married or showed any (recorded) interest in women; indeed, he wrote in his notebooks that male-female intercourse disgusted him. His anatomical drawings naturally include the sexual organs of both genders, but those of the male exhibit much more extensive attention. Finally, Leonardo surrounded himself with beautiful young male assistants, such as Salai and Melzi.

This is a bit of gay history that is conveniently being straightwashed out the history books and media. Case in point STARZ’s show “Davinci’s Demons”  a young and sexy Leonardo (Tom Riley), who also seems to have invented the stubble trimmer and Supercuts along the way to designing  the paraglider and the helicopter. shares a fictional storyline and his bed with high-class Medici mistress Lucrezia Donadi (Laura Haddock) who does more than pose (topless of course) with Leonardo while he’s supposed to spend painting her portrait.

Many historians and scholars have speculated about Leonardo’s sexuality based on his intimate relationships with male companions and his tendency to depict the male form in his artwork, unfortunately after 600 years other than the teenage sodomy charge there is no other direct evidence of his sexuality either straight or gay but circumstantial evidence points to da Vinci either being gay or at the very least bisexual.

Over 30,000 Protest Anti-LGBT World Congress Of Families Meeting In Italy

Over 30,000 Protest Anti-LGBT World Congress Of Families Meeting In Italy [VIDEO]

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Via The Guardian:


An estimated 20,000 people (some estimate 30,000) have protested in Verona against a conference which has brought a global network of anti-gay, anti-abortion and anti-feminist activists to the northern Italian city.


The hosting of the World Congress of Families (WCF), a US coalition that promotes the values of the Christian right, has been especially contentious in Italy as it is supported by the far-right League, a partner in the country’s coalition government. Matteo Salvini, the party’s leader and Italy’s deputy prime minister, spoke at the event on Saturday evening.


Other speakers have included Brian Brown, the WCF president, who fought against same-sex marriage in the US; Theresa Okafor, a Nigerian activist who likened gay people to the Boko Haram terrorist group; and Lucy Akello, a Ugandan politician who helped pass an anti-gay law that sets life imprisonment as the maximum penalty for homosexuality in Uganda.

News outlets report that LGBT activists came from as far afield as Britain, Croatia, Germany, Poland and Switzerland to protest. Many sang “Bella Ciao”, an anthem of the Italian resistance during WWII, and banners carried slogans including “Our bodies and our desires, it’s we who decide”.

As many of you know Brian Brownshirt is also the current President of the National Organization for Marriage (NOM) who alongside Moo-gie Maggie Gallagher fought against same-sex marriage in America and failed miserably.

Tens of Thousands Take To The Streets and Protest For Gay Rights In Rome – Video

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Rome Protest for Gay Rights

Tens of thousands of gay rights supporters and LGBT families rallied in Rome to protest against the watering down of Italy’s civil unions bill, which no longer allows adoption rights for gay and lesbian couples.

“Today in Italy, in 2016, we still have to beg for charity, for crumbs, in terms of rights. We want equal weddings, adoptions and full rights. Full rights,” said  Alessia Avellino, a 21-year old sociology student.

The bill, which had to be cut back to the bare bones to pass in the senate and is now being examined in the lower house, is only a small step towards securing rights for homosexual families, and are especially angry over the scrapping of a clause which would have allowed gay people to adopt their partners’ biological children  a proposal the prime minister, Matteo Renzi, was forced to dump under pressure from the Catholic church.

Supporters of the of gay rights hope to force a change to the draft law before it is ratified – or at least open a debate on rights that could eventually lead to an adoption bill.

“The law is unsatisfactory. It’s a first step, [but] it doesn’t give us those rights that are fundamentally ours,” law student Edoardo Messineo said.

Uguaglianza complete!

 

WTF?! – Dolce & Gabbana Disgustingly Compare Themselves to Charlie Hebdo – “Je Suiss D&G”

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D&G

 

After trying to weedle their way out of their anti-gay comments on Sunday by releasing a statement reading: “It was never our intention to judge other people’s choices. We do believe in freedom and love.” and that Dolce was expressing his personal views “without judging other people’s choices.”  Stefano Gabbana seeing it was not working took to Instagram not much later to compare their situation to that of Charlie Hebdo magazine which was the victim  of a gun attack o, which left 12 people dead.

The unmitigated gall  of comparing and playing victim to tragedy where people are physically attacked and killed for satire is very different from people choosing to  not to buy D&G’s overpriced crap because they offended millions of people. It is not only insane but offensive beyond words.  How dare they exploit other people’s deaths and compare it to them losing profits and reputation.

If their original remarks were not enough to drive you to #BoycottDolceGabbana this is.

 

14 Year Old Boy Given Back By Foster Parents Because He Is Gay‏

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shame on you

A 14 year-old boy who was fostered by an Italian family has been disowned by his foster parents for simply for being gay.

Reported by Marida Lombardo Pijola’s blog on the Il Messaggero website Tuesday, the boy has been repeatedly discriminated against and bullied by other children because of his sexuality.  But instead of providing support for their bullied child, his foster parents, who are from a small unidentified Italian town, were unsympathetic.

“It created too many problems – we can’t handle it,” the parents were quoted as saying. “At school his classmates don’t accept it. Everyone says to us why do you bother?”

As a result the intolerant foster family gave the boy up and he was once again put back into the over burdened Italian child welfare system.

Those people should be allowed anywhere near children let alone being allowed to foster them.

Tragic.

Tony Perkins’ KKK Bud David Duke Kicked Out Of Italy for ‘Plans to Exterminate Blacks and Jews’

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Tony Perkins FRC KKK

David Duke, a former leader of the Ku Klux Klan, who has very close personal and “business” ties to the anti-gay hate group the Family Research Council’ and its President Tony Perkins was kicked out of Italy last week after authorities deemed him as “socially dangerous” for his plans to start a pan-European neo-Nazi group.

A court in Venice upheld a decision to deny a permit of residence renewal to the former Republican member of the Louisiana House of Representative and holocaust denier, who was found living under false pretenses near the northern town of Belluno.

“Official reliable sources have revealed [Duke] plans to establish an organization aiming to exterminate the black and Jewish races in Europe,” the sentence read.

Duke, who served as Grand Wizard of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1970s, appealed against the decision, which was however upheld by Venice administrative court.

Duke has also previously arrested and expelled from the Czech Republic as suspected of promoting the launch of a movement for the suppression of human rights and fundamental freedoms and was  banned from Switzerland over his activities related to the white supremacist movement in 2009.

In 1996, while managing the U.S. Senate campaign of Woody Jenkins against Mary Landrieu, Duke’s good friend and fellow Louisianian  the one and only Tony Perkins of the anti-gay hate group the Family Research Council paid him $82,500 to use the mailing list.   The campaign was fined $3,000 (reduced from $82,500) after Perkins and Jenkins filed false disclosure forms in a bid to hide their link to Duke.

In 2012 Duke claimed thousands Tea Party activists urged him to run for president.

The Anti-Defamation League has described David Duke as “America’s most well-known racist and anti-Semite”.

We just call him Tony Perkin’s boyfriend.

Barilla Pasta Plans “Inclusive” TV Ads After Major Disaster With Anti-Gay Remarks

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Barilla Bigitoni

 

Okay so we all know the story.

Barillia Pasta CEO Guido Barilla made anti-gay remarks to a radio interviewer in September in Italy and commented afterwards that if the “gays didn’t like they could eat somebody else s pasta”.  Well we didn’t eat it and neither did our straight allies around the world.  Now with the effects of the boycott taking a monetary toll on top of the company’s profits falling more than 21 percent  as Italy struggled through its worst recession in six decades last year.  Barilla pasta has decided that they will embrace the gay and work on a new advertising campaign “that will be much more open and much more inclusive,”

Guido Barilla,, since the PR nightmare has held at least eight meetings with gay organizations and activists both in Italy and in the United States and Barilla will now also participate in the U.S.-based Human Rights Campaign’s corporate equality index, (You know the HRC got some serious Lira)

“Italy is a very insular country, company spokesman Luca Virginio told Reuters, saying the firm had been shocked by the global backlash.

“The meetings have helped open our eyes and ears to the evolution taking place in the world outside Parma.”

He said the shock could lead to a shift in focus from rosy depictions of traditional Italian family life that have always been the staple of Barilla advertising campaigns.

LGBT journalist Daniel Villarreal summed it up micely on his Facebook page:

Hey guess what, Barilla Pasta? I don’t care how many “gay inclusive” ads or “diversity committees” you set up in your company. Your CEO’s shitty, anti-gay bigotry have lost me PERMANENTLY as a customer. So way to be suddenly progressive this late in the game, but you won’t get another dime from this faggot.

And I agree with Daniel 100 percent.  A few commercials with two gay guys playing Lady and the Tramp over a plate of spaghetti and paying off the Human Rights Campaign IS NOT going to make me start buying their pasta again.

And neither should you.

 

 

Guido Barilla Apologizes For Offending Gays Worldwide. No One Cares – Video

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Barilla Bigitoni

Guido Barilla,  chairman and CEO of Barilla pasta has issued ANOTHER apology, this time on video saying that he is sorry for telling an  Italian radio show that Barilla is a company that “likes the traditional family.”  And therefore, you’re not going to see any gays in Barilla’s advertising.  And if gays don’t like it, “they can always go eat someone else’s pasta.”

Barilla swears he’s “never discriminated against anyone” and promises to meet with LGBT activists. He had already apologized via a series of statements, including one in which he claimed to “respect” gays.

“Yesterday I apologized for offending many people around the world. Today I am repeating that apology,” he says in the video. “Through my entire life I have always respected every person I’ve met, including gays and their families, without any distinction. I’ve never discriminated against anyone. I have heard the countless reactions around the world to my words, which have depressed and saddened me, it is clear that I have a lot to learn about the lively debate concerning the evolution of the family. In the coming weeks, I pledge to meet representatives of the group that best represent the evolution of the family, including those who have been offended by my words.”

PLEASE NOTE:  In the video below that the camera only recorded Guido from ABOVE the waist to disguise the fact that his pants are on fire.