Homophobia, insults against youth athletes wearing the pink jersey

Bologna, March 16, 2016 – “A very serious incident, dramatically symptomatic of a dangerous climate for young people and the very young”: Gabriele Piazzoni, national secretary of Arcigay, refuses to downplay what happened on the Volpiano pitch in the Turin area, where the Settimo Calcio youth team, who wore pink jerseys on the pitch, were subjected to homophobic and racist insults by their opponents. "The most inconceivable thing," Piazzoni emphasizes, "is the desperate attempt by club executives to downplay or shrug their shoulders in the face of what happened. I ask them: is this supposed to be the 'healthy and educational' environment in which they want the new generations to grow up? Are racism and homophobia negligible in these environments? Those who didn't feel the need to report these facts and waited for the media to do so, and those, even worse, who hide behind a childish 'I wasn't there,' are in fact legitimizing homophobia and racism in the environments where our boys and girls grow up. Violent language and hate speech frequently emerge in stadiums, from the stands, but also from the playing fields. And when the cameras are off, we discover that insults to a Serie A player can degenerate into a real lynching in amateur and youth teams. Homosexuality becomes an offense, pregnant with the worst prejudices that are instilled in young people precisely in the "These are their most fragile ages, the age in which they explore themselves and others in an attempt to define their identity, including their sexual identity. Therefore, sports authorities must take responsibility once and for all. The Volpiano case, where sport became a traumatic afternoon of fear and humiliation for a group of innocent twelve-year-olds, deserves exemplary sanctions. Either football proves to be a truly formative place, capable of enforcing rules and principles and, above all, reacting to such serious incidents, or we better start to seriously worry about the danger and harmfulness of certain sporting contexts," concludes Piazzoni. "Acknowledging what happened on a playground," urges Marco Giusta, president of Arcigay Torino "Ottavio Mai," "also means acknowledging the training gap among professionals in the fight against discrimination, racism, and homotransphobia. This gap isn't a disgrace, but rather something that urgently needs to be addressed. In this regard, we are fully available to collaborate with all sports clubs that want to take concrete steps to combat these phenomena," concludes Giusta.