Qua la moglie e là il marito,
ognuno va dove gli par;
ognun corre a qualche invito,
chi a giocare e chi a ballar.
Here the wife and husband there,
Everyone goes where he wishes.
Everyone runs to some invitation,
Who to play, who to dance. - Goldoni
I’ve been paying greater attention to Italy lately in an attempt to resuscitate my familiarity with the language and now it is always in my head. I’ve been tweeting about the public evils of Silvio Berlusconi, the civic virtues of Emma Marcegaglia, and assorted other personalities and issues for the better part of three months now. One of the more interesting topics to erupt there in the fall was an ‘outing’ of legislators that drove the country into a positive frenzy.
But first, this necessary word on European/American relations. One of the great ironies of the fragile personal relationships between Europeans and Americans is this: We feel immensely, achingly inferior to them. And they feel immensely, achingly inferior to us. And we feel immensely, defensively superior to them. And they feel immensely, defensively superior to us. We carry ourselves internally with the hubris and optimism of the very young. They carry themselves internally with the arrogance and pessimism of the very ancient. It is around this awful nexus of pride and humiliation that we dance through our encounters in life, politics, and culture. It makes for a damned funny picture sometimes, but it also makes cross-continental commentary something of a minefield. Do trust me when I write that I love Italy with my whole heart, and also when I lay claim to the full panorama of hypocrisy, violence, and stupidity (plus all the finer stuff, for sure) that has made American public life what it is today.
On to the story: A list of ten names appeared on a phantom blog hosted in the US as September drew to a close. The blog purported to be outing ten Italian politicians accused by the publishers of being closeted gay homophobes who use their political positions to deny civil rights to LGBT citizens. It was the same fiasco we’ve seen unfold here in the US so many times. It was, apparently, something close to a first for Italians, at least in terms of its concreteness. Everyone was up in arms. I’ve been reading the sites of journalists, (now former) government ministers, and others concerned with the situation. It was an interesting scrum.
The prime objection that came as a backlash against the publication was, simply, that blogging the list was in itself a crime against human dignity and the right to privacy. In addition, it was perceived as an invitation to those who would perpetrate still more discrimination or even violence against LGBT Italians. Finally, the release was itself deemed a violent and ham-handed canard by no less a personage than Mara Carfagna, Italy’s (former) Minister for Equal Opportunity.
It is always fascinating to me to see how various people cope with this type of revelation – or more to the point, how they rationalize a failure to cope. For many people – certainly not just in Italy – there is a desire to let human attraction simply be what it is: a mysterious wonder that descends and sweeps us poor saps off into various states of intoxicated bliss and misbehavior. Then there are those who wish to label everything, so they can (presume to) know it and understand it and file it away in a neat category where it will sit in stasis forever. Still others simply want ‘truth in labeling’ so they will know what they are getting in the wilder marketplaces of romance. I understand the wish for each one of these things. But the one inescapable issue with politicians in these situations, in any country in which they’re being outed, is the undeniable stain of hypocrisy. In this case they are alleged, by the light of day and in the Camera dei Deputati, to be giving and benefitting from the impression they are one thing – presumably, straight married people. In their off-hours, they are doing who knows what with who knows whom, apparently of the same gender.
Let me say right now that due to direct experience and observation I know a little something about the fabled ‘continuum’ of human sexuality and romantic attraction. I am quite comfortable operating without the use of tidy sexual labels. I know very well a person may have a relationship with a person of the same gender without being homosexual, simply by virtue of falling in love.
Coming from this vantage point I can honestly say I don’t care if some legislator has lovers of the same gender and chooses to shield those relationships from the public. I believe private matters do exist and it is fine to make room for them in our lives. But from the moment – and I mean the moment –they cast a vote against a gay rights bill, or issue statements about the sanctity of marriage between a man and a woman, they are fair game to at once be placed in the sights of the loaded revelatory guns of any and all activists possessing the pertinent information. No tribunal, no mercy, case closed. You may fire those names when ready, attivisti!
The reasons for the perfect ethical appropriateness of such a response are apparent: these are people who enjoy the privilege of holding public office, and the regard of the people they serve. It is not the noblest thing to have a lover in addition to your spouse in any case, but it is not something I am willing to rage sanctimoniously about or, certainly, reveal. However, acting in the manner of a rank hypocrite raises the choice-making of such officials to a whole new level of turpitude.
It is a dreadful thing for a politician to harvest all the back-slapping congratulations he can get for upholding the family when he turns around and cavorts sexually with the gays in his free time. Words fail me in my attempt to render the moral ‘ew’ factor of such a thing. Anyone who does it should be turned into a public joke at the earliest possible moment and hopefully soon thereafter turned out of office. (And let there be no doubt – I feel precisely the same about heterosexual politicians with opposite-sex lovers who tout in their speeches the sanctity of the marriage they later spend so many happy hours violating. Out them, and vote them out! Say – I think I feel a slogan coming on.)
Italy is enduring a multitude of paroxysms right now, chiefly assorted economic travails and the ongoing cringeworthy high farce that is the life, libido, and now aftermath of (former) Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. These difficulties are playing out in the world’s instantaneously updated media and increasingly jittery global markets, ensuring that Italians feel to varying degrees dispirited, anxious, or downright angry. There is a lot of great humor out there too, of course, but I see more serious emotions on venues like Twitter, the comments sections of Italian dailies, and the Facebook pages of (former) officials such as Minister Carfagna.
We should hold in our thoughts our long-suffering friends in Italy. We Americans have had, after all, way more than our share of embarrassing, hypocritical leadership. We have felt ourselves to be laughingstocks of the earth at any number of points in our history. [As I write this, in fact, we have police summarily battering protestors as the “Occupy Wall Street” movement expands to encompass more and more states and locations. Our president has reserved unto himself – and used – a proviso for actually assassinating American citizens under certain circumstances. And we are apparently perpetrating torture in Afghanistan. Meanwhile, country singers compare our president to Hitler and complain about the consequences in the entertainment marketplace, and presidential candidates positively stinking with self-righteousness claim their adulteries are “nobody’s business.” Clearly, we have no room to talk.]
But the troubles of the historical moment, however mortifying, always turn around. There aren’t any shortcuts, though. Politicians who misuse their offices to degrade the public trust through infamous hypocrisy – even in their ‘private’ lives – are a great place to start in pressing for reform.
Tags: Europe, gay, italian politicians, italy, LGBT, mores, outing, politics, privacy
