[:it]ARCIGAY: "OUR ENERGY IS THE ANTIDOTE TO INSTITUTIONAL HOMOPHOBIA."“
Bologna, June 23, 2017 Five Pride parades are scheduled for the fifth weekend of Onda Pride, the major event organized by Arcigay and the network of LGBTI (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex) associations. From May 27th to August 19th, the event will feature twenty-four Pride parades in as many Italian cities. Tomorrow, Saturday, June 24th, it's Pride time in Catania: meet at 5:30 PM in Piazza Cavour, where the parade will depart and wind down Via Etnea to Piazza del Teatro Massimo. Catania's mayor, Enzo Bianco, along with political and union representatives and spokespeople for the associations, will speak there. Tomorrow is also Pride Day in Naples: Mediterranean Pride of Naples 2017 will meet tomorrow at 4 PM in Piazza del Municipio, before crossing the city to Via Partenope, near Castel dell'Ovo, where a stage will be set up for speeches by associations and institutions. Furthermore, following last year's debut, Latina will once again host Lazio Pride: the event will begin at 5:00 PM on Viale Italia, featuring testimonials, events, and plenty of quality music. Tiziano Ferro, one of the initiative's promoters, will also be participating via live video. Milan will also be tinged with rainbow colors, with the event scheduled for tomorrow at 2:30 PM in Piazza Duca d'Aosta, where the parade will begin, cross the city, and end at Porta Venezia, where a stage will be set up for political speeches and a concert. Finally, the three-day Perugia Pride Village kicked off today, and will get underway tonight with the parade scheduled for 10:30 PM in Borgo XX Giugno. It will continue until Sunday with debates and music in the Giardini del Frontone. "The Pride Wave is in full swing," comments Gabriele Piazzoni, national secretary of Arcigay, "and the five demonstrations scheduled for this weekend are a beautiful snapshot of a country crisscrossed from north to south by the mobilization of LGBTI people and their demands for rights. However, we cannot help but dwell on the shadows that some of these events bring with them: in both Milan and Perugia, in recent days we have witnessed a dialectic that is, to say the least, disheartening between the LGBTI world and institutions. I refer in particular to the Lombardy Region's denial of sponsorship to the Milan Pride and, even more so, to the sponsorship granted and then revoked by the City Council to the Perugia Pride Village. These episodes reveal an incontrovertible fact: the center-right political forces, however much they wish to portray themselves as moderate or even liberal, are actually permeated by the worst regurgitations of a radical, racist, and homophobic right, which has nothing to do with the European right, which in Other countries have even promoted same-sex marriage. The case of Perugia is emblematic in this sense: while the Municipality granted patronage to the LGBT Pride demonstration, the same Municipality, led by Berlusconi's Andrea Romizi, denied the request of two Italian mothers to have the Spanish birth certificate of their newborn baby transcribed. A schizophrenic and irresponsible act, which highlights the charlatanism of these politicians, their utter superficiality, their absolute inconsistency, and the unbridgeable gap between what they say and what they do. Romizi is the dramatic (and therefore faithful) representation of the Italian center-right: fanatical, radical, and inadequate. These politicians occasionally try to disguise themselves as sheep, but we have learned to recognize their wolfish style from afar. Against these political opportunists, Pride is the best antidote: tomorrow, five Italian squares will be filled with our cry, which speaks of rights and freedom, despite whoever opposes them. in politics he does not know the culture of rights or even works blatantly to take away our freedoms", concludes Piazzoni.
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