Italy's gay movement becomes visible outside the Sanremo Casino
Sanremo, 1972: Psychiatrists, we will cure you! How a small group brought the Italian gay movement into the light.
On 5 April 1972, a small group of men and women stood outside the Casino in Sanremo, placards hung around their necks. Inside, an international sexology congress of the Catholic-leaning Centro Italiano di Sessuologia was meeting. The topic: "deviant behaviour in human sexuality". This meant above all homosexuality, as a disorder that could be treated and cured.
Outside, people saw things differently. One of the placards read, in essence: "Psychiatrists, we have come to cure you." The demonstrators belonged to FUORI!, the Fronte Unitario Omosessuale Rivoluzionario Italiano. The Turin bookseller Angelo Pezzana had founded the group the previous spring. The name said it all, for "fuori" means "out" in Italian. Support came from several European countries, including from Mario Mieli, who later became one of the defining voices of the Italian gay movement.
It was not a mass demonstration. But for the first time, homosexual people in Italy openly and visibly resisted being considered ill. In a country where they were hardly spoken of except in whispers, that was a break.
Today the protest is regarded as the birth of the Italian homosexual movement, often referred to as "Italy's Stonewall". Even Italy's UN mission in New York commemorated this day in June two thousand and twenty-one, along with the resistance to so-called conversion therapies.
For the fiftieth anniversary, the movement returned to the scene. In April two thousand and twenty-two, Arcigay showed an exhibition on its own history in Sanremo, and the city experienced its first Pride. A few steps from the Casino, where the cure of homosexuals had once been debated.