“"If you're a faggot, you have to hide." This, in short, is the refined political analysis of two representatives of Salerno's intelligentsia, the director of the Eboli Cultural Center for Historical Studies and the editor of the cultural monthly "Il Saggio.".
Another South: The Crowd at Bari Pride
The South has a short shadow; it exposes its contradictions to the midday sun and lets them explode, because shadows are short-lived. This year, one of the most beautiful civil rights demonstrations ever held in our country, the Bari Gay Pride, took place in the South. In Salerno, Caserta, and Naples, the gay movement is experiencing a new phase of visibility and activism. In the South, a young professional like Pasquale Quaranta, the target of the sniping of two local matre à penser, can courageously decide to come out as gay and, as they say, "open the debate.".
Good: let the debate not end. Let us continue to question why two self-styled intellectuals can be so sadly imbued with archaic prejudices and so obtusely deaf to the arguments of the other. And whether culture, the quintessential forum for dialectical debate and transformation, should not take on the responsibility, here and now, of understanding how much consensus the positions of the two homophobes from Eboli still have and what antibodies should be circulated to defend plurality and increase the willingness to understand.
Sergio Lo Giudice
National President of Arcigay