Dear Ferrara,
First of all, allow me to thank you for choosing to open “Radio London” to a reflection on the theme of the rights and existence of LGBT people – lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender – actually taking inspiration, certainly unintentionally, from a news item that is not news.
It's not true, in fact, that the new president of Arcigay Bari is the first heterosexual to be elected president of one of our provincial committees. There are at least three precedents in Arcigay's history, one of which is sensational: the decades-long presidency of Arcigay Messina, headed by a heterosexual woman, Roberta Palermo, a remarkable figure for her civic and human commitment.
Perhaps once again we must bitterly acknowledge that in our country the great prominence of too many women fails to achieve the recognition they deserve, and so eleven years of presidency and courageous sacrifices by one have remained invisible, while the other's two days of visibility have made headlines.
Mysterious mysteries in the news and beyond. Furthermore, it shouldn't be surprising for someone to commit themselves in the name of an ideal or political project, regardless of their sexual orientation. Nor is it surprising, at least in European countries with strong cultural and social development, for openly gay or lesbian people to rise to the leadership of states, governments, ministries, large capitals, or important financial and industrial groups.
On a general level, the question of "who represents what" is obviously extremely relevant, that is, how the representation of issues, interests, and concerns must always be primarily direct and the fruit of active citizenship. Indirect representation creates passive citizenship and generates antidemocratic mechanisms and blatant misunderstandings between different concepts: representation is different from consensus, sharing, or participation.
I obviously appreciate your reasoning, which recognizes the full freedom of people to be themselves without distinction of any kind. After all, Jeremy Bentham, in his "Freedom of Taste and Opinion," wrote this in the eighteenth century, noting that a state that interferes in the sexual preferences of its citizens is comparable to a theocratic state.The problem, however, is that non-interference in the sexual lives of citizens is barely enough to distinguish it from a theocratic state and is not sufficient to represent a secular and equitable state.
His distinction between homosexual rights and culture then appears even more questionable, because it seems to want to place rights on an absolutely private level of recognition (the right to exist and have sex) and culture on a completely public level of recognition that is precluded to us.
Here our paths divide.
I'll turn the question around: what do you mean by homosexual culture? Is it the cultural significance of homosexual people?
From this point of view, it seems indisputable to me that Michelangelo or Wilde or Virginia Woolf, homosexuals, possess cultural relevance as much as Georges Simenon or Chaplin or Pablo Picasso, heterosexuals, rightly possess it.
Is homosexual culture perhaps a problem, as a culture of liberation, or as an attempt by a minority to assert the right to equality not of mere sexual behavior but of the much more complex orientation?
If that were the case, all liberation cultures striving for equality, whether black, Jewish, or women, would be equally problematic.
The real mistake lies in thinking that personality can only be realized in a private dimension and does not always require freedom of public expression.
You are not only homosexual in the bedroom, but also at work, at school, and in your family, and you should have the right, if you feel like it, to be able to declare it without fear of being marginalized.
Otherwise we would have learned nothing, absolutely nothing, from the lesson of the black Rosa Parks who did not get off the white bus, because that was also her bus, in her city, in her country.
Equal rights cannot be achieved without cultural battles, but at the same time, culture is on a different plane than rights: culture changes, but people's inalienable rights cannot depend on things changing: either they exist completely, or they don't exist at all.
Is it perhaps liberal for the prejudices, or fears, or tastes of some, whether many or few, to become normative to the point of canceling the rights of others? I imagine not.
The marriage we demand is civil marriage, not religious marriage, so why should a liberal state deny it to us? Are we equal in tax obligations but unequal in civil rights? Do we want to discuss this on the basis of principles?
European culture answers this question for me and for LGBT people, through legislation that embraces the principle of equality that translates into recognition of same-sex couples and their parental capacity.
No, dear Ferrara, we can't separate culture and rights while ignoring the fact that the spheres are different. Otherwise, left-handed people would still be discriminated against; we would still have parental authority, and many twentieth-century aberrations would rear their ugly heads again.
Culture cannot be an elsewhere where we ideologically say “no” to demands that legally deserve only a dutiful and very civilized “yes.”.
Cordially
Paolo Patanè, national president of Arcigay