Italian reparative therapy, and exorcising homosexuality out.

Via Vecchifroci I came to know about Davide Vari, an Italian journalist who posed as homosexual in order to enter religious "reparative" therapy circles. Though affiliated somehow with NARTH, the people involved in ex gay movements in Italy are also affiliated with the Catholic Church (Roman, that is), and Vari dissects the process and procedures of diagnosis and therapy in an article published in Liberatione, but also in his own blog. For those of you understanding Italian, this is the full text of its report. In brief, as I'm not really fluent in Italian, Davide posed as a gay man having had "full sexual relationships" with other men "both active and passive", and conducted a series of interviews with priests and psychologists, undergoing what he clearly describes as the Minnesota Test for purposes of measuring his degree of homosexuality, perceived in such circles as a deviation from natural law, perversion, or neurosis, depending on the interviewer.

Prompted by this article, Arcigay's president, Aurelio Mancuso, issued an statement asking to the proper Health institutions in Italy to watch carefully those reparative "therapies" and reminding that as of May 1990, the World Health Organization declassified homosexuality as disease and filed it into a natural variant of sexuality.

Of course, Catholics will not stay quiet about this statement, perceived as a direct attack to the Church: Catholic World News affirms that such WHO declassification of homosexuality was a success of The Homosexual Lobby — whenever I read "Homosexual Lobby" I can't help figuring out some sort of obscure and evil council of leather daddies, smoking cigars, plotting the conversion of all the world's children into gays and lesbians over a huge plasma round screen in the middle of an oval table. It might sound funny but it's the 21st century and you can't bring up again the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, can you? — plus defending their psychologists in the worst way they could to the eyes of a former Catholic: building their academic authority in their militancy with the Legionaries of Christ.

But on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, AlterNet offers an interesting interview with Scott Harrison, who

"desperately tried to change his sexual orientation in various "ex-gay" ministries for eight years, three of them as a ministry leader in Southern California. Most of his experience with ex-gay groups — Christian organizations that see homosexuality as a choice that can be changed with proper therapy — was with Living Waters and Desert Stream, two curricula of a national ex-gay network that has more than 80 branches today. When Harrison joined in 1982, he felt ex-gay ministers were then a band of compassionate outsiders attending to the first AIDS victims. But by the end of that decade, Harrison had taken note of the movement's increasing radicalism, symbolized for him by the minister at the Vineyard Christian Fellowship in San Pedro, Calif., who performed an exorcism on him in an attempt to cast out the "demons" said to be the cause of his homosexuality. Harrison finally quit the movement in 1990 after deciding he could, after all, reconcile his sexuality with his Christian faith."

Technorati tags: Ex gay, Reparative therapy, Italy, Davide Vari

City of Rome puppet of Vatican

"The city council in Rome has blocked plans for a domestic partners register for same-sex and heterosexual couples.
The Vatican, which is an independent state within Italy as well as the seat of the Roman Catholic church, had vehemently opposed the measure." From Pink News.

Now it'll be certainly curious to see how Rome, and Italy at large, complies with the newly issued European Union Chart of Rights, given that Italy doesn't have any sort of excluding signature in the same sense that Poland got it, so that rights wouldn't be applied to homosexual citizens. And given that UK civil partnerships are recognized in Spain as marriages, and that seems to be a common trend all over the countries comprising the European Union, one wonders for how long would a British civil partnership stay unrecognized in Italy or Poland. After all, it might be a matter of courts, but in the end we're going to have homosexual marriage in the European Union. Or is this just my wishful thinking?

Technorati tags: Italy, Vatican, Gay marriage, Civil partnerships

A double rule in Europe

While European (and African) LGBT organizations, with help of EU governments, are pushing African governments to stop state-supported homophobia in preview of a EU-Africa summit next week, Italian government Foreign Minister says plainly that gay marriage won't be supported in Italy. That speaks enough for Europe's double rule, and while I personally think that the Yogyakarta principles should be adopted worldwide, and of course welcome the push on African governments, Italy should be pushed too in order to stop anti-gay bias in its governments officials. Not long ago, it was an Italian city major who blabbed in favor of creating gay ghettos there. And then retake the Pink Triangle used in the 40s, that could be next step.

While Italian politic corpse is well aware and ready to hurt feelings of Islam followers, it seems to me that such a territorial insertion as the Vatican State is displaying a lot of force in Italian politics, just in the same way the Roman Catholic Church would love to do in Spain, however not risking the creation of a separate political party. Now, this is how our democracy works: if you want to become a lawmaker you have to run for the Congress and obtain a majority there.

Technorati tags: Double rule on homosexuality, Italy, Africa, Yogyakarta Principles

News around the world

And just to keep a bit updated, these news:

Italian politician calls for "ethnic cleansing" of gays

The northern Italian city of Treviso has witnessed mass demonstrations after the deputy mayor called for the ethnic cleansing of homosexuals.

Hundreds of demonstrators gathered outside the city hall at the weekend demanding his resignation.

Giancarlo Gentilini, told a local television station on Wednesday: "I will immediately give orders to my forces so that they can carry out an ethnic cleansing of faggots."

Australians demonstrate against ban on gay marriage

Thousands of people marched yesterday in Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney as part of the National Day of Action, which marked the three year anniversary of gay marriage being outlawed.

The largest of the marches was in Melbourne, where more than 5,000 people attended. All the marches were peaceful.

Prime Minister John Howard's Liberal government passed federal legislation in 2004 banning same-sex marriage.

Ban on homosexuality in Uganda "unenforceable"

Ugandan laws prohibiting homosexual activity have resulted in no arrests of couples despite people being open about their sexuality and the fact that there are more than 160 members of leading gay organisations.

According to the Monitor.co.ug, Oscar Kihika, the president of the Uganda Law Society said: "You can't just arrest someone for saying they are gay.

"That's like arresting someone just because he says he stole something, with no proof," he said.

Nigerian men could face death penalty for 'gay marriage'

18 men have been arrested at a hotel in northern Nigeria and charged with sodomy.

The men, who were detained by police on Sunday, come from different parts of Nigeria and were allegedly dressed in women's clothes. They had come together to celebrate a gay 'marriage,' according to the NAN government news agency.

The arrests took place in Bauchi city, the capital of a Muslim state in the centre of Nigeria with a population of 316,000.

Technorati tags: Nigeria, Italy, Uganda, Australia, News, LGBT