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HOMOSEXUALITY AND IGNORANCE Posted by: gayprojectforum - 10-12-2017, 11:12 AM - Forum: Gays and secularity - No Replies The fundamental problem for the concrete realization of the criteria of freedom and equality on which a secular civil society should be established is represented by ignorance, in consequence of which, instead of concepts based on facts that are not known, preconceptions completely unfounded take place. In order to know the reality about homosexuality I reproduce below a fundamental document by the World Health Organization ("Cures for an illness that does not exist") where are summarized some points of extreme importance to gay people. This document is the synthesis of very high scientific level of the work of thousands of specialists coming from all over the world. I invite you to see how the contents of this document reflect faithfully what Gay Project has always supported. I think that there is no need to place side by side this document with other well-known documents of confessional origin. I refer the interested reader to two articles published by Gay Project: GAY BETWEEN REAL MORAL AND REPARATIVE THERAPY http://gayprojectforum.altervista.org/T-gays-between-real-moral-and-reparative-therapy POPE RATZINGER AND HOMOSEXUALITY http://gayprojectforum.altervista.org/T-pope-ratzinger-and-homosexuality __________________________ Pan American Health Organization Regional Office of the World Health Organization “CURES” FOR AN ILLNESS THAT DOES NOT EXIST Purported therapies aimed at changing sexual orientation lack medical justification and are ethically unacceptable Introduction Countless human beings live their lives surrounded by rejection, maltreatment, and violence for being perceived as “different.” Among them, millions are victims of attitudes of mistrust, disdain and hatred because of their sexual orientation. These expressions of homophobia are based on intolerance resulting from blind fanaticism as well as pseudoscientific views that regard non-heterosexual and non-procreative sexual behavior as “deviation” or the result of a “developmental defect.” Whatever its origins and manifestations, any form of homophobia has negative effects on the affected people, their families and friends, and society at large. There is an abundance of accounts and testimonies of suffering; feelings of guilt and shame; social exclusion; threats and injuries; and persons who have been brutalized and tortured to the point of causing injuries, permanent scars and even death. As a consequence, homphobia represents a public health problem that needs to be addressed energetically. While every expression of homophobia is regrettable, harms caused by health professionals as a result of ignorance, prejudice, or intolerance are absolutely unacceptable and must be avoided by all means. Not only is it fundamentally important that every person who uses health services be treated with dignity and respect; it is also critical to prevent the application of theories and models that view homosexuality as a “deviation” or a choice that can be modified through “will power” or supposed “therapeutic support”. In several countries of the Americas, there has been evidence of the continued promotion, through supposed “clinics” or individual “therapists,” of services aimed at “curing” non-heterosexual orientation, an approach known as “reparative” or “conversion therapy.”1 Worryingly, these services are often provided not just outside the sphere of public attention but in a clandestine manner. From the perspective of professional ethics and human rights protected by regional and universal treaties and conventions such as the American Convention on Human Rights and its Additional Protocol (“Protocol of San Salvador”) 2, they represent unjustifiable practices that should be denounced and subject to corresponding sanctions. Homosexuality as a natural and non-pathological variation Efforts aimed at changing non-heterosexual sexual orientations lack medical justification since homosexuality cannot be considered a pathological condition.3 There is a professional consensus that homosexuality represents a natural variation of human sexuality without any intrinsically harmful effect on the health of those concerned or those close to them. In none of its individual manifestations does homosexuality constitute a disorder or an illness, and therefore it requires no cure. For this reason homosexuality was removed from the relevant systems of classification of diseases several decades ago.4 The ineffectiveness and harmfulness of “conversion therapies” Besides the lack of medical indication, there is no scientific evidence for the effectiveness of sexual reorientation efforts. While some persons manage to limit the expression of their sexual orientation in terms of conduct, the orientation itself generally appears as an integral personal characteristic that cannot be changed. At the same time, testimonies abound about harms to mental and physical health resulting from the repression of a person’s sexual orientation. In 2009, the American Psychological Association conducted a review of 83 cases of people who had been subject to “conversion” interventions.5 Not only was it impossible to demonstrate changes in subjects’ sexual orientation, in addition the study found that the intention to change sexual orientation was linked to depression, anxiety, insomnia, feelings of guilt and shame, and even suicidal ideation and behaviors. In light of this evidence, suggesting to patients that they suffer from a “defect” and that they ought to change constitutes a violation of the first principle of medical ethics: “first, do no harm.” It affects the right to personal integrity as well as the right to health, especially in its psychological and moral dimensions. Reported violations of personal integrity and other human rights As an aggravating factor, “conversion therapies” have to be considered threats to the right to personal autonomy and to personal integrity. There are several testimonies from adolescents who have been subject to “reparative” interventions against their will, many times at their families’ initiative. In some cases, the victims were interned and deprived of their liberty, sometimes to the extent of being kept in isolation during several months. 6 The testimonies provide accounts of degrading treatment, extreme humiliation, physical violence, aversive conditioning through electric shock or emetic substances, and even sexual harassment and attempts of “reparative rape,” especially in the case of lesbian women. Such interventions violate the dignity and human rights of the affected persons, independently of the fact that their “therapeutic” effect is nil or even counterproductive. In these cases, the right to health has not been protected as demanded by the regional and international obligations established through the Protocol of San Salvador and the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights. Conclusion Health professionals who offer “reparative therapies” align themselves with social prejudices and reflect a stark ignorance in matters of sexuality and sexual health. Contrary to what many people believe or assume, there is no reason – with the exception of the stigma resulting from those very prejudices – why homosexual persons should be unable to enjoy a full and satisfying life. The task of health professionals is to not cause harm and to offer support to patients to alleviate their complaints and problems, not to make these more severe. A therapist who classifies non-heterosexual patients as “deviant” not only offends them but also contributes to the aggravation of their problems. “Reparative” or “conversion therapies” have no medical indication and represent a severe threat to the health and human rights of the affected persons. They constitute unjustifiable practices that should be denounced and subject to adequate sanctions and penalties. Recommendations To governments:  Homophobic ill-treatment on the part of health professionals or other members of health care teams violates human rights obligations established through universal and regional treaties. Such treatment is unacceptable and should not be tolerated. “Reparative” or “conversion therapies” and the clinics offering them should be reported and subject to adequate sanctions. Institutions offering such “treatment” at the margin of the health sector should be viewed as infringing the right to health by assuming a role properly pertaining to the health sector and by causing harm to individual and community well-being.7 Victims of homophobic ill-treatment must be treated in accordance with protocols that support them in the recovery of their dignity and self-esteem. This includes providing them treatment for physical and emotional harm and protecting their human rights, especially the right to life, personal integrity, health, and equality before the law. To academic institutions:  Public institutions responsible for training health professionals should include courses on human sexuality and sexual health in their curricula, with a particular focus on respect for diversity and the elimination of attitudes of pathologization, rejection, and hate toward non-heterosexual persons. The participation of the latter in teaching activities contributes to the development of positive role models and to the elimination of common stereotypes about non-heterosexual communities and persons. The formation of support groups among faculty and within the student community contributes to reducing isolation and promoting solidarity and relationships of friendship and respect between members of these groups. Better still is the formation of sexual diversity alliances that include heterosexual persons. Homophobic harassment or maltreatment on the part of members of the faculty or students is unacceptable and should not be tolerated. To professional associations: Professional associations should disseminate documents and resolutions by national and international institutions and agencies that call for the de-psychopathologization of sexual diversity and the prevention of interventions aimed at changing sexual orientation. Professional associations should adopt clear and defined positions regarding the protection of human dignity and should define necessary actions for the prevention and control of homophobia as a public health problem that negatively impacts the enjoyment of civil, political, economic, social, and cultural rights. The application of so-called “reparative” or “conversion therapies” should be considered fraudulent and as violating the basic principles of medical ethics. Individuals or institutions offering these treatments should be subject to adequate sanctions. To the media: The representation of non-heterosexual groups, populations, or individuals in the media should be based on personal respect, avoiding stereotypes or humor based on mockery, ill-treatment, or violations of dignity or individual or collective well-being. Homophobia, in any of its manifestations and expressed by any person, should be exposed as a public health problem and a threat to human dignity and human rights. The use of positive images of non-heterosexual persons or groups, far from promoting homosexuality (in virtue of the fact that sexual orientation cannot be changed), contributes to creating a more humane and diversity-friendly outlook, dispelling unfounded fears and promoting feelings of solidarity. Publicity that incites homophobic intolerance should be denounced for contributing to the aggravation of a public health problem and threats to the right to life, particularly as it contributes to chronic emotional suffering, physical violence, and hate crimes. Advertising by “therapists,” “care centers,” or any other agent offering services aimed at changing sexual orientation should be considered illegal and should be reported to the relevant authorities. To civil society organizations: Civil society organizations can develop mechanisms of civil vigilance to detect violations of the human rights of non-heterosexual persons and report them to the relevant authorities. They can also help to identify and report persons and institutions involved in the administration of so-called “reparative” or “conversion therapies.” Existing or emerging self-help groups of relatives or friends of non-heterosexual persons can facilitate the connection to health and social services with the goal of protecting the physical and emotional integrity of ill-treated individuals, in addition to reporting abuse and violence. Fostering respectful daily interactions between persons of different sexual orientations is enriching for everyone and promotes harmonic, constructive, salutary, and peaceful ways of living together. _____ 1 Human Rights Committee (2008). Concluding Observations on Ecuador(CCPR/C/ECU/CO/5), paragraph 12. <http://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/hrc/docs/co/CCPR.C.ECU.CO.5.doc> Human Rights Council (2011). Discriminatory Laws and Practices and Acts of Violence Against Individuals Based on Their Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity (A/HRC/19/41), paragraph 56. <http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/HRBodies/HRCouncil/RegularSession/Session19/AHRC-19-41_en.pdf> Human Rights Council (2011). Report of the Special Rapporteur on the Right of Everyone to the Enjoyment of the Highest Attainable Standard of Physical and Mental Health (A/HRC/14/20), paragraph 23. <http://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/hrcouncil/docs/14session/A.HRC.14.20.pdf> United Nations General Assembly (2001). Note by the Secretary-General on the Question of Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (A/56/156), paragraph 24. <http://www.un.org/documents/ga/docs/56/a56156.pdf> 2 The human rights that can be affected by these practices include, among others, the right to life, to personal integrity, to privacy, to equality before the law, to personal liberty, to health, and to benefit from scientific progress. 3 American Psychiatric Association (2000). Therapies Focused on Attempts to Change Sexual Orientation (Reparative or Conversion Therapies): Position Statement <http://www.psych.org/Departments/EDU/Library/APAOfficialDocumentsandRelated/PositionStatements/200001.aspx> Anton, B. S. (2010). “Proceedings of the American Psychological Association for the Legislative Year 2009: Minutes of the Annual Meeting of the Council of Representatives and Minutes of the Meetings of the Board of Directors”. American Psychologist, 65, 385–475. <http://www.apa.org/about/governance/council/policy/sexual-orientation.pdf> Just the Facts Coalition (2008). Just the Facts about Sexual Orientation and Youth: A Primer for Principals, Educators, and School Personnel. Washington, DC. <http://www.apa.org/pi/lgbc/publications/justthefacts.html> 4 World Health Organization (1994). International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems (10th Revision). Geneva, Switzerland. American Psychiatric Association (2000). Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders(4th ed.,text revision). Washington, DC. 5 APA Task Force on Appropriate Therapeutic Responses to Sexual Orientation (2009). Report of the Task Force on Appropriate Therapeutic Responses to Sexual Orientation. Washington, DC. <http://www.apa.org/pi/lgbt/resources/therapeutic-response.pdf> 6 Taller de Comunicación Mujer (2008). Pacto Internacional de Derechos Civiles y Políticos: Informe Sombra. <http://www.tcmujer.org/pdfs/Informe%20Sombra%202009%20LBT.pdf> Centro de Derechos Económicos y Sociales (2005). Tribunal por los Derechos Económicos, Sociales y Culturales de las Mujeres. <http://www.tcmujer.org/pdfs/TRIBUNAL%20DESC%20ECUADOR%20MUJERES.pdf> 7 See General Comment No. 14 by the Committee on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights with regards to the obligation to respect, protect and comply with human rights obligations on the part of States parties to the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights.   GAYS BETWEEN REAL MORAL AND REPARATIVE THERAPY Posted by: gayprojectforum - 10-12-2017, 10:45 AM - Forum: Gays and religion - No Replies I just finished reading the journalistic very documented report on the "reparative therapy of homosexuality" the therapy that Catholic groups recommend to solve the “problem” of homosexuality (http://gayprojectforum.altervista.org/T-...osexuality) all under the supervision of a professor of psychology at the Gregorian Pontifical University. Already on another occasion I had to mention the “gay science” (gay here means light) of so-called scientists, but here things are more serious because behind these things there is the endorsement of the Catholic Church and this is not then the usual isolated guru. In these things are involved churchmen. I am personally convinced that the Christian message is a very serious thing, or rather something that, if taken seriously, is a very serious thing, and I have known men of the Church who have really spent their lives for the others. I wonder how it is possible that what is described in the published report could obtain the approval of the Church. How could be tolerable that a boy 15/16 y. o. should be subject, according to the will of the parents, to raving "reparative therapy od the homosexuality". These things are not only immoral but verge on the Criminal Code. On the Italian blog of Gay Project (and kept all data) someone thought to place false comments linking to sites that reported for reparative therapy of homosexuality. Given the above, without taking into account the specific contents of the article, which show the squalor of certain circles, I’d like to develop here a few reflections on the idea of morality. For some people, who are inspired by the principles of a religious nature, morality corresponds to conform to a set of rules to which one attempts to give an absolute value, even revealed, and in this sense the pronunciation of any dogma about the content of the moral condemns as relativism any idea of evolution of the morality. For others, morality is not a para-legal matter, is not a dignified form of the Penal Code which defines authoritatively what is good and evil, but it is a principle according to which everything that is moral decreases the level of suffering of our neighbors and everything what is immoral increases it. Such principle is clearly of relativistic nature and does not require that there are objectively good things and objectively bad things, from this point of view good and evil are not judged a priori but only a posteriori on the basis of what they cause (cannot a good tree bear bad fruits, nor a bad tree bear good fruits). Now, each of us has a conscience and, as I have often said, there are people who need to get from outside their license of morality, starting from a more or less realistic adherence to accepted codes of conduct based on a principle of authority, in essence abdicating their freedom of conscience in the name of obedience, and there are people who consider unthinkable to accept external rules conflicting with their conscience. These people may work hard to find the principles of morality and to get reed of the external moral which is always the seemingly easier to accept. A blog like this, viewed in the perspective of the people who evaluate prejudicially the homosexuality as "intrinsically disordered", is obviously considered morally reprehensible, not only because it also talks about sex, but because it attempts to emphasize the idea of "homosexuality as a value", that is, tends to emphasize that homosexuality itself, like all forms of love, can be experienced with a deep morality, with a total respect for others and to always promote the good of others. The statement “gay = immorality” is not only deeply false but often doesn’t even come from ignorance, which may partly justify it, but from a radical form of hypocrisy. Who reads this blog, if has a minimum of conscience and honesty of mind, can never see gay people as bearers of a moral tendency "intrinsically disordered". I am gay, I talk to gay guys ten hours a day and I wonder: how can people who know these guys still have prejudices about the morality of gays? Among the gay guys I know, who are certainly not a few, I saw incredible acts of generosity, to the sacrifice of themselves and their own aspirations according to the good of others. I want to claim for pure spirit of truth, integrity, dignity and moral worth of a site like this, that gives me and the guys a chance for discussion and meeting, which alleviates the sense of loneliness and emotional deprivation which unfortunately still characterizes the lives of many gay men, which promotes peace of individuals and helps them to be comfortable with themselves and with others. I do not mean to be conceited: I see it every day, I can see the affection that I receive. I do not have the truth in my pocket and through this blog and chatting with the guys I changed my mind several times about substantial things. I'm not a psychologist, I have no claim to change the trends of anyone, things like that seem pathological to me. I have no ulterior motives of any kind and even less of economic nature, I have not established professional associations, I do not claim to be a scientist, all these things are thousands of miles away from me. I am Gay, I write it with a capital letter and I am glad of it. If there is something good to do for the gay guys, I feel obliged to do it, whatever the cost. Being gay is the source of my morality and when I talk with the guys and find them exactly like me, with the same dreams, the same anxieties, the same will to live their being gay so high, decent, moral, then I remain in my already deep-rooted belief that being gay is a value.   REPARATIVE THERAPY TO CURE HOMOSEXUALITY Posted by: gayprojectforum - 10-12-2017, 10:19 AM - Forum: Gay discomfort - No Replies Below you can read, in English, an important journalistic investigation on reparative therapy of homosexuality. The article, by Davide Varì, was published (in Italian) in the newspaper “Liberation” of December 23, 2007. __________ This is the story of a reporter who attended a course organized by an ultra-Catholic group for months. I told him, “I’m gay”. They replied: “Yours is a mild illness, we can cure it well …” Are you gay? Come to us, we will take care of you. Diary of six months in therapy … “The road to my presumed salvation begins with a meeting to define when and how I had to join the therapy group to cure my homosexuality” The story of a reporter who was infiltrated for months into a course organized by a ultra-Catholic group Davide Varì The appointment is with Don James at the headquarters of the Edizioni Paoline [Well-known publishing house of inspiration that is strongly Catholic] not far from Garbatella, a former lower-class quarter of Rome. A meeting to define when and how to join the therapy group to cure my homosexuality. An appointment was hard to get. Self-styled healers of gays, at least in Italy, do not want too much publicity. To trace the Italian one, I had to call a counterpart Swiss group that turned me to the Milan office of “Objective Chaire”, an ultra-Catholic association that organizes, yes, therapeutic meetings, but only in Milan. In the end they suggest Don James in Rome, a young prelate who, they say, can help me. And now, after that long pilgrimage, I’m there: I’m finally in front of the studio of Don James; the first step of my “healing” journey. A journey that lasted about six months in which I found myself immersed in a parallel world made of reticence, half-truths, ambiguities and strange alliances between the Vatican and some groups of psychologists led by Professor Tonino Cantelmi, president and founder of the Catholic Italian Psychologists Psychiatrists Association and professor of psychology at the Gregorian University [A well-known pontifical university in Rome]. But first there is Don James, the first level of evaluation of the “seriousness of the patient,” it is for him, a representative of the Catholic Church. Don James was kind. After several telephone conversations in which, with great discretion and tact, he asks me the reasons that lead me to this therapy, it’s time of the meeting. After a short introduction, begins the interview itself. There are two or three fundamental questions: how many times have I had gay sex, how often, and how I felt. I tell him almost all the truth, all except for the fact that I’m a journalist and not a homosexual. I tell him that I’m married; I have a daughter and throw it there a couple of homosexual experiences related to my adolescence and the concern that those experiences can return to the surface and ruin my marriage. Don James listens with participation. He then begins the work of investigation to understand the reasons for my homosexuality. He asks about my parents, the relationship with my mother – in respect of which pulls out quite a good conflict. It is always good, I think, the priests and the psychologists like it – I tell him about of the marginal role of my father, about sex with my wife, interpersonal relations, and so on; a superficial but full scanning of my experiences. Then the question: “When was the first time, David,” Don James asks. I tell him about a guy in my high school, named Luke, who was a good friend and how that friendship over time and in a completely unexpected way, was transformed into a sexual relationship. Don James listens with attention and participation. He sees I’m stressed and changes the subject: “Do you believe in God?” He asks. I say that I come from a very religious family but no, I never practiced. But lately, I add, I feel reborn in me something different. It is the most delicate moment, the moment where you have to choose whether to go through with it passing over the sincere religious beliefs of Don James, or end it there and leave. It’s like if I made fun of his faith, and perhaps no one gives me the right to get up to that point. Then I am convinced that in the daily reality, these “healers of homosexuals” only do damage: take a person, in most cases driven by family, tell him that his homosexuality is a deviation from the norm and invite him to take with them a healing journey, or better a “repair” journey. And then I decide to go ahead and pick up the appeal of Don James: “Let us pray together?”. With an effort, even if I’m an atheist, I pray with him. After the moment of silence Don James, with the same delicacy, invites me to continue my story. “Your relationship with Luke – he says – was passive or only active?” Don James wants to know if I have “suffered” the penetration. It must be just that the fundamental distinction to find out if, in fact, you were a true homosexual. “Active and passive”, I say suddenly. “And I also liked,” I say almost in the sense of challenge, faced with that question so vulgar. Vulgar not to the thing itself, but rather because for the first time I begin to glimpse, or so it seems to me, the real thoughts of the priest so young and friendly, a hole that exposes the judgment on me, or better on “people like me”. Don James nods austere and then asks me to talk about other relationships. Then I pull out a brief relationship with another guy who I had sex with after I married. Don James asks me to tell about the feelings I had felt. I invented a “sense of moral filth” I still live and I carry within me. The young priest is silent. He blesses me and calms me. “Your homosexuality – he says – is very superficial. I think you are ready to begin the healing path. ” At that point, I ask a few questions and inquire on what he called “path”. Don James, roughly speaking, tells me that almost all homosexuals have suffered a trauma or something that stopped the “natural” construction of true sexual identity. “For this – he says – are reparative therapy; to take back that experience, finding the fracture and redefine their gender identity. You are in a state of sexual confusion; you have to get help to redefine your sexuality in a correct way.  “Perfect, I’m ready to start the “path”. Don James takes a piece of paper and writes phone and address of Professor Tonino Cantelmi, “call him in a week, tell him I sent you, he will know it all.” He blesses me and dismisses me. *** The first meeting with Professor Cantelmi The study by Professor Tonino Cantelmi – President of the Institute of Cognitive Interpersonal Therapy, says on the label – is a seaport in which transit and land concerns and anxieties of varied humanity: children, adolescents, mothers, grandmothers. There is everything in that study. I sit down and wait to be called. He, the professor, sometimes comes out and greets a patient. With everyone he’s very confidential, they call him Tonino. Finally comes my time. I collect ideas to avoid contradicting than the story I told Don James a few weeks before. I refresh the scheme and the invented the names of my false lovers, and I put in the study of the Professor. He looks me up, smiles at me and makes me sit. “I’m David, I say, Don James sent me.” He nods – “with that name he put me in the category of repented homosexuals”, I think to myself – and invites me to tell my story. At that point I start with the story of high school, my relationship with my classmate and the concerns for my marriage after another relationship I had with a guy a couple of years ago. “What kind of relationship did you have?” Cantelmi asks. I pretend not to understand. “I mean – continues Professor – you had complete intercourse?”. I nod, but expect the professor comes out of his den and asks me the question, the question with the capital Q, in a direct way and he did not disappoint me,  “So David – tells me blunt – you’ve been passive in your sex life?” Here we go again, I think to myself. “Yes,” I answer. I decided to play the part of laconic. On the one hand I’m afraid to contradict myself, on the other because I want to see the skills of the professor in action. I am curious to see how he moves, how he works but he surprises me and after that one answer, ready to get rid of me, take pen and paper and writes the name of a colleague: “She is Dr. Cacace – he says, handing me the note – this is my assistant, contact her in my name. She will already know everything. “I seem to see a movie already seen however I do not want to miss the opportunity to find myself in front of the “guru” of the Italian healers of gays and then I rise to speak before he leaves me. “Listen, doctor – I say with the utmost of kindness – I want to understand exactly what’s expected of me.” “Nothing in particular – he says – the doctor will make a test .” “A test?”, I echo. “Yes, a test.” “A test to measure the degree of my homosexuality?” I interrupt him. “Well! Somehow, yes”, he says. “Excuse me – I ask – but what exactly is homosexuality?” At that point Cantelmi sits down, stretches out his arms on the table and begins: “I will speak of your homosexuality, not homosexuality in general. Let’s say that we are a group of psychologists who try to help people in need. Ours is a reparative therapy” *** Reparative therapy: homosexuality like communism There was talk for some time of these deviated sex thaumaturges. A fashion well spread in North America thanks to the work of many church-related groups that follow the teaching and practice of Joseph Nicolosi, president of NARTH, National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality. A clinical psychologist, this Joseph Nicolosi, a “guru” that boasts 500 cases of “gay treated” and cared for – just like that,” gay treated “- and that pulled out of the hat of his own psychiatric witchcraft the so-called “reparative therapy” whose stated purpose is to “bring homosexual persons to heterosexual orientation.” A message that has been taken in Italy and raised by Professor Tonino Cantelmi, president and founder of the Italian Catholic Psychologists and Psychiatrists Association and professor of psychology at the Gregorian University. In short, the Italian guru of reparative therapy, a person associated with the Vatican with double knot around which was born a working group consisting of five or six young psychologists who take care of individual therapies of the future and “repaired” heterosexuals. This reparative therapy is ancient history. Already in 2005, the Gay Pride magazine published a long article in which it questioned any scientific validity and reliability of this therapy. Franco Grillini, honorary president of Arcigay, also introduced a parliamentary question to block, through professional associations, reparative therapy. Even for this J.M. van den Aardweg, the American psychotherapist who wrote “Homosexuality & Hope” talks about gay lobby onslaught of science. Just to understand what is behind this alleged reparative therapy, the same van den Aardweg says – he did in a recent interview for “Acquaviva2000, Catholic culture on the net” – that many homosexuals” have serious mental disorders, or have developed a homosexual behavior of such proportions that it would not be so wrong to call them “sick”. “Not only that, van den Aardweg believes that because of the gay movement, “the masses will never completely assimilate unnatural concept that is imposed on them. It will go as with communism. Many, probably most, will pay to unnatural homosexual “religion” a formal cult, dictated by fear, but people will end up believing in it less and less.” These are the distinguished scientists who sponsor reparative therapy. Even more explicit the watchwords of the aforementioned ultra-Catholic group “Objective Chaire”: ” Spiritual, psychological and medical accompanying; attention to parents, teachers and educators in order to prevent the emergence of homosexual tendencies in children, adolescents and in young people; search for causes (spiritual, psychological, cultural, historical) that contribute to the spread of attitudes contrary to the natural law, knowable by reason properly formed.” Then the inevitable Joseph Nicolosi, an American clinical-psychologist who invented the reparative therapy. In a few days he will be in Italy to update his followers and illustrate for them, probably, the latest of his treatment. These are basic ideas: first, in the light of the social sciences, the form of the ideal family to promote the healthy development of the child is the traditional model of heterosexual marriage, and second, sexual identity is formed at an early age on the basis of ” biological, psychological and social elements”, and thirdly, there are many examples of people who have managed to change their behavior, identity, sexual fantasies or stimuli. In support of these theses “ex-gay” movements are born, people “repaired” and often converted to Catholicism who have the express purpose of proving that homosexuality can be “cured”. The beauty of it is that more and more groups of “ex-gay” are dissolved due to the fact that many members have re-found a partner of the same sex right in that organization. *** Reparative therapy of Cantelmi Cantelmi tries to fit on me, in my case, the reasons for treatment. He speaks of childhood trauma; confusing in a world already full of contradictions and fluidity in interpersonal relationships. All this to explain that in a sense the behavior of the homosexual person is induced by this external schizophrenia. Not only homosexuals though. Professor Cantelmi is convinced, and explains it to me, that our age is characterized by a large sexual compulsivity: an addiction that affects thousands of people, including many, many young people. He speaks of “sick relationships with sex,” of “loss of control” and so on. “And in all this, homosexuality?” I ask. “Well, my studio is full. We have a row. There are hundreds of guys asking for help. ” “You see – I say, trying to drive him out – I do not know if I’m homosexual. I do not know if I am the victim of some sort of mental illness or if I have to accommodate these, my instincts. ” “Do not worry David – tells me serene and smiling – from your profile I think I can speak of a generalized anxiety and a slight neurosis that somehow affects and diverts your sexual choices. Now we will test and we will have more items to choose the best treatment. ” *** The Test and the disciples of the professor and the cure Dr. Cristina Cacace Institute of cognitive interpersonal therapy directed by Cantelmi greets me smiling in his office. She looks at me, looks at me rather insistently. “Now she rumbles my game – I think – she discovers that I’m an infiltrator and drives me out.” (But no. Clearly, the diagnosis of Professor Cantelmi has influenced me. A little neurotic, I really feel persecuted. The fact is that she invites me with kindness in his study Ikea style, makes me sit and asks me: name, age, address, phone and marital status. I answer without hesitation and wait here, too, for “the” question. But Dr. Cacace already knows and does not need any introduction. We jump directly to the most intimate details: how often and up to what point. “Up to what point … what does it mean?” I ask. She smiles. I wonder if she, a young psychologist, really does believe the madness and violence of this blessed “reparative therapy” or is she there in that little studio just because she could not find anything better. But my thoughts were interrupted by the question of the doctor: “David, your homosexual relations were only active or also passive”? I feel strongly uncomfortable with the question asked, obsessive. I am reminded of the itchy and voyeuristic side of the person who asks it. At the end I answer as I have already answered Don James and Professor Cantelmi “Yes, active and passive.” I also tell her of my troubled relationship with my mother, the absence of my father and I would add that every so often, as a child, I was mistaken for a baby-girl. The young assistant of Cantelmi nods gravely and fixes an appointment for the personality test. “After the test – tells me before accompanying me to the door – we will know better how to deal with your situation.” A few days later I’m back there and I find that the test takes about four hours and is nothing but the so-called “Minnesota Test” used by the armed forces all over the world to select their staff. About six hundred questions that should give answers on deviations of the candidate: hypochondriasis, depression, hysteria, psychopathic deviation, masculinity or femininity, paranoia, psychasthenia, schizophrenia, hypomania and social introversion. Simply put a potpourri that, among other things, would clarify my homosexual tendencies. However, the doctor gives me the test, a pen, and puts me in the hallway. I begin to scroll through the questions: “Have you ever experienced very strange thoughts?” Or, “Would you like to be a florist?” Answer yes to this question driven by the banality of the consideration. Perhaps those who choose to do the florist, they say, have a predisposition to become a little pansy. Suddenly I am struck and distracted t by the silent presence of a lady and a young teenager. They are mother and son. He seems very shy, uncomfortable. I cannot say, but it could very well be a boy forced by his mother to stem, at least until it is time, “his own homosexual deviance.” Again I think of how narrow this practice is and how much violence it has in it. I think the pressure that may undergo a 15-16 year old boy who is discovering his own sexuality, the concern, often well-intentioned, of the parents and the choice to do something to stop this “discovery” rather than accept it and support it. Then the woman and the boy are caught in one of the many rooms of the study of students of Cantelmi and I go back to my infinite test: “Have you ever made unusual sexual practices?” “Did you like to play with dolls? “;” Someone controls your mind? “, “Do you often desire to be of the opposite sex? “;” The man should be the head of the family? “… Having finished the test, I go back into the room to see the doctor. She puts away my papers that already contain the result of my “degree of homosexuality” and pulls out a dozen colored cards with funny shapes. These are the spots of the Rorschach test. Undefined color spray, acting unconsciously activating projective reactions. In short, in the face of those spots I’m invited to track down and communicate meaningful figures. I launch striving to see penises, vaginas, anuses and so on. I identify even a couple of fetuses hung by the umbilical cord. I give the worst of me, trying to convince Dr. Cacace that my sexuality is particularly diverted, so corrupt and homosexual to merit her care. But she, in front of my genital rant does not bat an eyelid: pulls one after another the other cards of the test and takes notes diligently. Meanwhile I do not hold back a fleeting glance at her neckline. She is surprised, holds back a little, covers and looks at me with embarrassment. So, after all that talk about my homosexuality, I fell into banality to reaffirm my “masculinity” in front of a woman. For the first time, somehow, I live on my skin the strength and violence of the social and cultural conditioning that gays live. Then, I continue with my figures … *** The results of the tests: how much am I homosexual? “Not much, your homosexuality is really blurred,” says Dr. Cacace showing twenty pages that contain my “diagnosis”. “Blurred homosexuality”, just like that. At that point I ask for more explanation. “So, I would say that we are facing a neurosis that has led to a sexual deviation – she continues – will be Professor Cantelmi to explain it better. After a few days I’m back in the waiting room of the professor. The feeling is the same: a seaport open to all “human cases”. Cantelmi, courteous and welcoming as always, browses the results of my tests and I talk about “light neurosis and depression” which led my sexual deviation, the output from the tracks of a healthy sexuality and informed. “You’re not really a homosexual,” he says. “Your concern seems more determined by a number of incidents of childhood.” Then stats with the conflict with my mother and my father’s absence, which I totally invented, I would be deprived of a strong male figure, a reference figure on which I should have modeled my sexuality and defined my gender. So I am not entirely homosexual. Perhaps therapy has already begun. Denying my homosexuality is the first step towards “healing.” It is probably a way to start disassembling the conviction of the “patient”. To hear, “you’re not really homosexual,” perhaps means to begin to dismantle the personality of the individual, his beliefs and put him in front of the fact – a fact certified by a psychologist – that his homosexuality never existed or better that homosexuality per se does not exist except in terms of a deviation from the norm, from the only real rule: heterosexuality. “At this point – then continues the professor – it’s going to fish out those fractures and overcome them through appropriate treatment.” “What kind of therapy?” I ask. “An individual therapy. One of my assistants will follow through with you, but I – calms me – I’ll be constantly informed of your progress”. “But I knew of mutual-help groups, I thought I would become a member there”. “There are the groups – he tells me – but they are groups of people who have a strong sexual deviancy. I do not think that is the best treatment for your condition. I do not know, we’ll see. ” I do not give up and try to find out what happens in those groups. “They are groups of people led by psychotherapists who share their experience toward a reparative course” adds hastily Cantelmi. Then he gets up, gives me the phone number of the next psychologist, of course, another assistant, and gave me a book: “Beyond Homosexuality” by Joseph Nicolosi. Nicolosi, he, the guru of the healers, the creator of reparative therapy, that has as many as 500 cases of “gay treated” or, better, repaired. “Read it – he says – there is a similar situation to yours. People like you who have made it. ” *** The book of Nicolosi “Over homosexuality” by Joseph Nicolosi is a collection of life stories. Eight stories of homosexuals corrected, repaired, and a final appendix on the mode of therapy. Among them Albert, a thirty year old “speaking in a slightly effeminate tone and with the nostalgia – said Nicolosi – of a child lost.”In fact, the problem of Albert, Nicolosi says in his book, is his attachment to the lost world of childhood. Hence an illustration of the recurring features of gay people: attraction detached for their own body, first sexual experiences with other boys, iper-masturbation – “homosexuals – says Nicolosi – masturbate more often than heterosexuals, it’s an attempt to establish a ritual contact with the penis”- and an overwhelming mother figure. At that point the purpose of Dr. Nicolosi is to “develop a more solid masculinity” of Albert. How? First is to free him from the oppressive maternal bonding, nurturing non-sexual male friendships, and going on long bike rides. Finally came the first progress: Albert manages to control masturbation, is separated from his mother, is not chasing his friend and continues to riding his bike within the neighborhood” “Just the good things are happening to you!” the doctor confides to Albert. Three years after Albert has a confident voice, every female inflection is gone, he is “emotionally detached from other males and masculinity”, and he is freed from the maternal control: the original sin, the cause of his homosexuality; Albert was also engaged to a girl. So he is repaired and is repaired because “understood – says Nicolosi – the concept of the false self”: the false gay identity that the outside forces you to. “No, I’m not gay” is Albert’s last comment before starting his new life as a heterosexual. Another interesting story told by Nicolosi is that of Tom: “A extraordinarily handsome man, about five feet tall, blue eyes, and well-dressed.” (Perhaps Nicolosi is showing a light homosexual orientation: the healer of gays who discovers he is gay, a classic already seen a thousand times). Tom is married, but separated due to a relationship with another guy, “Andy, a twenty-four irresistible.” Nicolosi is clear to Tom: “If you want to divorce your wife and start a new life with your gay lover I’ll never approve! “. The fact is that Tom feels empty without a wife and children and does not know how to present himself in society, how to pull off his homosexuality. These are a couple of good reasons to start reparative therapy. The fact is that, at least for Nicolosi, Tom is a homosexual abnormal: “He doesn’t have achievement problems with other men, in business he is strong and determined and outgoing. But underneath – reveals Nicolosi – he has the emotional weakness typical of homosexuals”. In short, Tom has a terrible fear of losing his wife and children and to find himself alone just because “homosexual relationships don’t have a future”. At that point Nicolosi meets Tom’s wife who has every intention to work together to bring his husband back on track. A job that succeeds, but the signs of homosexuality have left their indelible mark: Tom is HIV positive and soon dies. The message, rather, the warning of Nicolosi is all too clear: attention, homosexuality can be cured but because of homosexuality you can also die. *** Evidence of healing When I get back in the studio of Professor Cantelmi I find that my recovery is in the hands of one of his young assistants. He, too, browses the results of my tests, and begins to talk about the path ahead. “We’ll retrace the conflict with your mother, the absence of your father, trying to heal the fractures that led to the confusion” “Confusion?” “Yes, of course, gender confusion. But before, David – continued the young doctor – tell me about your homosexual experiences”. For the fourth time I find myself talking about my story with a fellow of high school and the fears for my marriage. But the question comes: “David, your sexual experiences were complete?”. “Do you want to know if I got it in the back, doctor? Yes, twice, “I say annoyed. He smiles sheepishly. But in fact it is exactly what he wanted to know. Then recovers and attacks. “I would also like to know the feelings that you felt.” On the verge of the exhaustion for those questions so repetitive and low-level I start with a long story. I tell him the story, inventing, every detail. I talk of the excitement of the male homosexual relationship, the sense of transgression and call to my mind some passages very suggestive and “gory” described by one of the patients of the book of Nicolosi. He drinks it all and takes notes diligently. Finally, I offered him the “sick man” that is inside me and he seemed visibly pleased. I start to feel a sense of nausea. Nausea for Don James, for Professor Cantelmi and his young assistants. It’s been six months since my first meeting and at this point I seem to be unable to bear it any longer. I realize that in this long period we have only talked about my butt. For the first time I realize that none of them has ever asked me if I happened to fall in love with any man. No one has ever wanted to know my emotions on homosexual relationships. Is it possible that they could more interested that just in the number of penetrations “sustained”? The young psychologist gives me an appointment. I greet him and disappear. I will never set foot in that study again. That was enough.   WHEN GAY RELATIONSHIPS COME TO AN END Posted by: gayprojectforum - 10-12-2017, 12:52 AM - Forum: Gay couples - No Replies I received a mail today that contained an excerpt of conversation between two gay guys. The conversation took place at the time of the end of their relationship. I have been asked to post the conversation on the forum, I do it  gladly. Some little changes have been made in order to preserve privacy. Actually, even though it is a conversation that concludes a relationship, the atmosphere is very quiet and sincere dialogue has not failed, even on the most thorny topics.   MARCO: Hey! ESTEBAN:  .. hello ... MARCO: There is some noise because I'm on the bus, tell me. ESTEBAN:  ... sorry, if you cannot talk, call me at another time. MARCO: No no, I hear you, tell me everything. ESTEBAN: I've been a bit sick these days, nervous, I'm just sleepy, distracted, yesterday I also packed a car! MARCO: I'm sorry. ESTEBAN: I called you because I want to ask you a last favor, please do it, I have to understand the meaning of our path, what happened, because at some point I became a ballast for you! Tell me what you did these three days since I left your home. Did you feel alone, bored or calm? MARCO: Quiet, you have to be quiet, I'm peaceful! ESTEBAN: What did you do? MARCO: … usual things, nothing particular or important ... ESTEBAN: tonight what will you do for your birthday? You deserve some fun ... MARCO: Well, if weather keeps nice I go to the theater! I don’t know, I have to decide, Lucy and Rose cannot accompany me, I think I'll take Matthew, I know he will agree! ESTEBAN: ... Matthew ... How about Mattew? MARCO: Well, well, I told you I'm fine with him! What I have to say, it's all so new, I don’t know, … you know I'm not sure of anything! Anyway yesterday we stayed together at his home! ESTEBAN: ... Together ...? (hush) (sigh) Did you already do that? MARCO: what??? ESTEBAN: Yes, I wanted to ask if you did it already? MARCO: Do you care if we did? ESTEBAN: Yes, please, I need to understand! MARCO: Yes, we did. But it was not even programmed, that is, I would never have imagined that a guy like him could be with one like me. We were walking around, then he asked if I would go to see a movie at his house ... Eh eh eh, what a nice excuse eh! (hush) ESTEBAN: How was it? MARCO: Well, strange, special, maybe I was expecting a little better, I do not know what to say. I was very much involved, however, with an involvement that with you I didn’t experience for a long time! ESTEBAN: So why would you come with me as you had already started thinking about him? MARCO: No, but, look, it is not over for him, it's over because I did not feel anything anymore! I was with you for affection. Perhaps I've always seen you more like a brother, a confidant, it's normal, we've always been fine-tuned, it was always spontaneous for me to tell you everything, there was an exceptional understanding! ESTEBAN: Did you enjoy it? MARCO: Yeah, but he was a bit sheepish, he's 20, he's still a kid, and I too I do not have so much experience ... You definitely were better than him! However, we did more or less the same things I did with you! ESTEBAN: But at this point I ask you, in six months have I ever enjoyed you? Have you ever been attracted to me? MARCO: Yes, please, you enjoyed me a lot! Attracted I think no or just a little, I was attracted a little just early in the way! (hush) Tell me, you think a guy can he be attracted to me? You know I think I'm ugly, I want to know what can be interesting about me ... ESTEBAN: Well, I can tell you what I've seen in you! Then you have to give yourself the same answers to me! MARCO: All right! ESTEBAN: I have been attracted by you sweetness, by your brain, by the fact that you document, you care about everything, by your smile, and then by the fact that you talk, I do not know how you can say you are shy and closed! MARCO: Thank you, we are both sweet. And physically? ESTEBAN: well, physically you know, the answer is in the poem I sent you this morning for your birthday! MARCO: … yes, so much stuff! ESTEBAN: For me you are beautiful, I adore your skin, the blond of your hair, the hairs, the robust feet and the slender legs. Your big eyes .. And then yes, even your penis I like it very much, damn! How it swells! I still remember the last time we were together, you got up to go to the shower, you looked like a Watusi with this penis still perfectly upright ... MARCO: And after having done it three times, huh, you know I'm just 23! ESTEBAN: Now it's up to you! MARCO: Well, let's see ... You're definitely sweet, you have not always been, at first not so much, then yes. It's not that I liked your character, but lately you've been able to give me some serenity. At the beginning of our story I saw that there was something wrong in you, you looked angry, sad, suffering. You absolutely have to laugh more. You have a wide mouth! And then open it to laugh, anyway yes you have a good smile! Look, you do not have to be serious because when you are, you're really ugly! I also have to say you were too shy, then the fact that during Christmas you brought me to dinner with your friends and did not say anything about us I did not like it! Sincerely, I would appreciate more effort on your part. You've decided to just come out now and it's a shame!  ESTEBAN: But I still have all my life in front!  MARCO: Then try not to go back or get lost! Anyhow I like it when you sing, you have a nice voice so you should do it! I've heard you in Spanish and I have to say that you change your voice, you're wasted to speak Italian, but when you speak Spanish you get a nice voice! But did you always have that voice? And you look like a South American! ESTEBAN: But you know that since I went to school I always presented myself as Stefano, I did not use my real name, it seemed to me that calling me Stefano they could accept me more easily. MARCO: But why? ESTEBAN: Then it seemed to me so. MARCO: But I say that it's such a beautiful name, exotic, and then it's just beautiful ... well, anyway, let's go ahead. Your features are particular, I have to say, I do not even know how to define them ... Surely they aren’t so common in Italy, there is little to do, you are not  and you will never be like an Italian guy! You have a strange skin, which is hard to get used to, and the dark color speaks clearly! You have a beautiful body, I like your legs, massive, muscular, sure, a bit of belly, but ok! However, you have to give more value to yourself, you overlook yourself a lot, you dress badly, maybe this last period you have been slim and you have found yourself in large clothes without having time to renew the wardrobe. But you have to do it. We are not beautiful and this is why we need to be careful to enhance our strengths. Well, don't put on sweatshirts because they're bad for you, because you're low, they shorten your shape and flatten you. Penis, I just do not like it circumcised, perhaps because I had never seen a circumcised penis before, anyway I like it not circumcised, just like mine. I doubt you'll be able to reconstruct a foreskin, but listen to the other tips! ESTEBAN: Of course you did not like me, the attraction was not reciprocal! MARCO: But be patient, you have to think that for the first time you sent me a picture with a bad resolution in my opinion. Sure, you told me you were South American, but I expected maybe one with a Brazilian body. That is, if I think of South America I think of Brazil, I don’t know where your country is and how its inhabitants are. Even after we saw each other, I had always in mind the image of your body that I had made, and when we were together it happened that I had one thing in mind, but then I found myself near a body that did not match. With Matthew it was different, I saw him and I was immediately attracted to him, but I did not fall in love with a telephone voice like it happened with you, you at the beginning were a projection of my mind! There is little to say about the dick, I never thought about asking you if you were circumcised or not, and it did not seem to me that I should ask for a photo. There it is what happens when you meet someone on internet” (Silence) (sigh) ESTEBAN: Sorry, that means I was lucky, you on the contrary got a bad surprise!  (sigh) Okay, that's enough for me. I renew my wishes and ... I don’t know, if you like to take a walk or have a coffee, you know that I come to M ***** once a week to see the psychologist. If you like, let me know ... MARCO: Ok. ESTEBAN: Bye! MARCO: Bye!   GAYS AND RELATIONSHIPS WITH WOMEN Posted by: gayprojectforum - 10-10-2017, 12:17 PM - Forum: If a woman loves a gay - No Replies I would like to try to illustrate how women fallen in love with gay guys are trying to cope with the situation.   Below, with the author's approval, I quote an email of a woman who has realized that her boyfriend had behaviors that are not typically straight.   "I'm writing to you because I need to clarify my ideas a bit, or maybe because I need to talk to someone.  I am a 25 year old girl and I fell in love with a guy a year older. He is a very nice and very sweet guy. I had previously been with other guys but a bit snooty and full of self and sometimes I was nervous, I thought that with such types I would never agree, then I found him and it was a completely different thing, he listened to me, talked a lot with me, behaving differently from other guys, being a friend, not hitting on me, and even if it seems absurd, I liked this behavior a lot. We have become intimate friends, let's say so, so much cuddle some kissing but of tenderness, not of passion, almost it wasn’t not real to me.  He never talked about himself, but made me talk, I did not mind this at first. We met every day but I did not know if he had a girl (obviously no) or had had one before, it seemed that these topics did not exist. Then I tried to make the first step to loosen him up a bit, I do not like the expression but, in short, it was not just a friendship for me, and there I saw his fear, I did the math and I thought that he could be gay but I did not say anything to him.  With the passing of months we have known each other better and I even offered him to go live together, and in the end he told me that he was gay. I told him stupidly that it would not make any difference to me and that we had to live together, because I wanted to stay with him anyway, but he looked at me and said, "Silvia, do not get angry, but a gay guy can only be good with another guy."  After this talk I felt very ridiculed, I wanted to get away from him because I interpreted what he had told me as a rejection, but I could not, I continued to see him, to console him when he was melancholic but he began keeping to himself more and more. I knew from other people that he probably had found a guy but I had not seen him for a long time and I resigned to the idea of not hearing him anymore. After experiencing the story with him, I think I will not fall in love with another guy, I'm stupid, I know, it makes no sense to fall in love with someone who doesn’t want you because he's gay, but that's exactly what happened to me.   Do you think that I can recover some relationship with him, I say just like a friend, of course, or do you think that he prefers to stay away? For me, if he has a boyfriend, is fine anyway, that would not create any problems, but maybe I'm still dreaming like a stupid woman, I think I don’t understand what kind of relationship a gay guy can have with a woman, that is, I understand it, but I do not want to understand it, I know that I still see him too much in the straight way to get along with him."   This is a typical mail of a woman in love with a gay guy but of a woman really aware of reality. The story with the gay guy is over and she realizes that this guy will never be her boyfriend. She still wants him well, but she understands that in the name of that wanting well there is no sense in claiming a role that does not follow spontaneously and shared. If the guy goes away means he has to go his way and it makes no sense to try to hold him. After all, in this story, the guy never "deludes" the girl, does not objectively cross the boundaries of a simple but profound friendship, which means that his behavior does not cause misunderstandings.    The following mail is of a completely different content, but it is perhaps more interesting especially for the different way of acting of the guy who, voluntarily and guilty, causes the girl to err and eventually causes her reaction to resentment.   "Gays … nice people! I say it very ironically! But why I tell you so? So you're convinced they're all good guys. It is not true that just straight guys tease girls, the gays do much worse, and I, unfortunately, run completely into it. I came from a bad story with a little prat … I liked him very much physically but he was just gross and at the same time immature, in short, a real little prat! I was really angry.  I go to the disco once with my friends and there they introduce Marco to me, I do not like him either, Marco seems to me a little bit without character, the other one was rough but Marco seemed even slippery, he didn’t even inspire me at the sex level, and when it comes to guys I’m not one for subtlety. In practice, I do not care about him at all, but I notice he keeps an eye on me, when I try to look into his eyes, he turns his gaze, but keeps looking. I wonder, "But what is he searching for?" I decide and ask him. He only answers me: "You are cute!"  You know how it is, girls like such things, and then I say, "You are cute too!" But so, just for compliment, because he did not attract me at all, then we danced and in practice I lost my group and spent the evening with him who stayed in the disco alone! Yes he was there just alone, without friends! With my usual generic logic I thought that if one goes to the disco alone he goes there just hunting for girls and he, in fact, was courting me. The following week we continued to exchange messages.  Seen by day, in the sunlight he was less slippery than he seemed in the dark of the disco, he was not a great deal, a bit too plump, chubby, but, in short, he could still work. After a few days I got bored of this guy and I did not call him anymore, but he kept sending me messages as he was half in love, and provoked me saying that he was impressed and often thought of me and so many other things, but I was not really interested and I did not answer, or maybe only rarely, and only for education, but I was trying to keep myself in the neutral.  One night he calls me and tells me he is very bad and absolutely needs to talk to me about something very important. I tell him that if he has to vent he can do it with a friend or with a psychologist, but he insists, as if it were a very important thing, but does not tell me what it is, in the end I can’t do it anymore, I'm stressed by his insistence and I'll tell him, "Okay, see you tomorrow." He insists that it must be immediately, but I tell him it's late and I do not know what to tell my mother and then he says it's okay for the next day. The next night we meet and go to talk in the car.  I expect a clear and direct speech but it starts talking about generic things, I cannot figure out where this is all going down, I ask him explicitly why he wanted to talk to me, but instead of answering he insist on generic chatting. I ask him, "But are you kidding me?" I confess that I thought he might be one with some mental problem, maybe a maniac. I was just angry, I asked him, "What do you want from me?" And he took my hand, then I said, "I know, I understand! But you are not my type ..." and there the contact between us took another way and we kissed, that is he was kissing me, I did not like too much but I was there.  When we broke away he said to me, "Do you think we could get together?" I said, "I do not know." He said, "You are the first girl I really fell in love with" I took it as a compliment. After a couple of days we went to have some sex, that is to say, just to touch us because he proceeded very slowly in these things. He had a way of doing all his own, I would say above all contemplative. He told me that I was beautiful that is not true because I am a very ordinary girl but he looked at me with admiration, caressed me, but did not take the initiatives that usually guys take.  Anyway, we got together. Typically, guys tend to stay away from the girl's family, he does not! He wanted to know my mother, my father, wanted to come to my house, a bit like a long time ago when there was the official engagement. He came to my house several times, my parents often invited him to lunch and his parents did the same, in a few months we become engaged in the classic way. All in all, it was all pretty nice, he was serious, he did not bother with the other girls, he was finishing his studies, and he would have found a good social position, even though these things were more interesting to my dad than to me. After a year of this kind of engagement in which we had also come to have sexual intercourses, always and only on my own initiative and insistence, finally we began to talk about marriage. My parents were happy and all in all I was happy too. We were always going around with friends on a Saturday afternoon and we were now an ironclad couple.  One day he tells me that he must unfortunately leave because he has an aunt who is very bad and cannot come with me the next Saturday, I tell him that it is fine and I do not mind. On Saturday, because there was a gay guy among our friends, this one proposes to go to a gay disco but where everybody can go for some fun, we decide and go. I feel like a fish out of water in that environment and I'm not going to dance but I sit a little defiled with two old friends. At some point I have the impression of seeing Marco on the dancefloor, dancing with another guy, the lights are hellish and it's hard to recognize people, but in the middle of the flashes I guess he is, I'm still upset, but I'm not sure and on the other hand there are too many people and too much smoke to see well staying away, and certainly I would never get close enough to be recognized. I say to my friends that it is too hot and I have to go out a bit.  The disco is practically in the countryside and around there is a large parking lot for customers. I leave, I run into the parking lot and Marco's car is there. I felt like breaking out for anger! I came back, I told my friends that I was sick and I wanted to go and we went home. They did not seen anything and had absolutely no idea that Marco was there.  The next morning Marco sends me the usual good sms, I ask him how his aunt is and he tells me she is "better". Well, I was so mad I couldn't see straight! I replied, "I saw where you were really last night. Get out of my face because if I see you again I’ll poke your eyeballs out!" Despite all he continued to lie and accuse me of homophobia! I did not answer him anymore and the story was over. I do not tell you the messing up at home, I could not tell them what happened, otherwise I would have been considered stupid all my life, so my parents gave me all the blame “because he was a very good guy”, and so on. That's what a gay guy did to me!  Let's see if you have the courage to publish such a mail! However I'm not angry with you, it's obvious, but you do not imagine how slippery can be a gay guy who wants to use you as a screen woman, it's just something hateful."   PARENTS AND GAY SONS Posted by: gayprojectforum - 10-09-2017, 11:23 AM - Forum: Parents of gay boys - No Replies Dialogue between parents and sons   In order to create a form of mutual respect and genuine affective contact between parents and sons, parents have to set aside all the predetermined roles and have to play without hiding behind comfortable attitudes that actually prevent their cons from really knowing their own parents.   Generally speaking, for a gay boy, perceiving that parents play a role, even in a positive way, but are not themselves and are not sincere, is equivalent to a refusal. And that perception is objectively correct.   In a serious dialogue, and especially if it is about sex or even homosexuality, there can be no a priori presuppositions. If the answers to give to your son already exist before each comparison of ideas, dialogue is only apparent. Whenever a parent tries to talk to his homosexual son aiming to convince him of something, i.e. by taking for granted what he will say to his son, regardless of the dialogue with his son himself, that parent is offending the dignity of his son and is creating a false dialogue.   With sons, and in particular with gay sons, it is indispensable to be 100% honest. In most cases, sons do not speak to parents about their homosexuality, and I would add that in most cases they do the right thing.   What I'm saying is that sons are often afraid of the reactions of their parents, and when fear comes into the relationship between parents and sons, the relationship between them is strongly spoiled. The guys I met through Gay Project, and with whom I often meet in chat, want to hear from me the confirmation that being gay means having a dignity, a morality, a high human dimension, not less than that of any other condition of life.   Often the less informed or less seriously informed parents have a completely prejudicial view of the gay world, identify it with the most striking and spectacular stereotypes seen on television ... but no! Gays, the real ones, they have nothing to do with these things, I know so many of all ages and are people very reliable who work, who try to believe in what they do and who often live in conditions of non-liberty because where they live homosexuality is not accepted.   There are people hiding (the great majority!), I call them "the invisible people," and hiding because they are afraid, not because they have something to hide. I've seen gays living very deep forms of love, with or without sex, no matter who gave them a serious affective response. I saw young boys literally destroyed by their parents' misunderstanding and a thousand times repented of having come out in the family.   Coming out  to parents usually causes anxiety and big hesitation in boys because very often the relationships between parents and sons are formalized and are reduced to relationships between roles rather than between people.   Parent’s role of support.   What must a parent do if he/she comes to know that his/her son is gay (from the son's coming out or otherwise)? The answer may seem trivial, but a parent who realizes that his son is gay, if he/she loves him, must help him to be gay. A boy told me: "After all, I had had a lion's courage to talk to them ... but they just took it in a strange way and said I had to cure myself."   Such a kind of attitude for a gay boy is equivalent to abandonment, a non-acceptance. Accepting does not mean trying to change the situation and not even hope for it to happen if there is an attempt to change things or the hope that things change, this means that acceptance is not there.   Being gay is not a choice but it is a basic quality of a person about which there is nothing to decide but everything to accept. Rejecting the fact that your son is gay means refusing your son from every point of view. Loving sons means loving them as they are!   Parents and sex education of gay sons   Gay-friendly parents, generally, often in good faith, believe they have nothing to say about affective and sexual education of their sons, but they are completely wrong. A gay boy must learn from his parents to be a serious gay, to consider sexuality a fundamental thing and to live it in an affective dimension characterized by honesty and respect for himself and others.   But apart from moral principles, parents can also play a major role in directing boys to responsible sexual behaviors in order to put aside any risky behavior. The parent's insistence on this point is generally considered by the boys as a form of positive interest and, in essence, as something rewarding. A twenty-year-old gay guy, who had a good relationship with his family, told me an episode that I quote for you here below through a passage of one of his mails.   At a certain point, I had quarreled with my boyfriend or maybe I was just a little tired of him, and although I was still in touch with him, I had begun to attend gay clubs and look for guys to have fun, without him knowing it, and my dad did something for which I will never stop thanking him. One night he waited until I went home, in practice until the morning, and he clearly told me that between loving a guy and going to be crazy to have fun there was a huge difference but if I wanted to get along with him, I had to do things seriously, he said to me: you must respect your boyfriend, because he is a boy like you and you are now cheating him, and if you behave in a less than respectful way toward the guy you say you are in love with, you lack of dignity. And he concluded like this: a gay guy must be a guy as he ought to! I think I will not forget such words anymore!   With this example I mean that a parent can and must play a role in relation to the gay sons and that role is to convey to the son the sense of dignity and respect for himself and for others, which are fundamental values for everyone.   GAYS AND GAY PRIESTS Posted by: gayprojectforum - 10-09-2017, 12:35 AM - Forum: True gay stories - No Replies Dear Project, I have seen that lately the activity of the forum is very low. I hope you have the opportunity to answer me because in your forum I have read many interesting things about gays, things that are very different from what I had heard for years and that I still hear. I'm 23 years old, I'm a gay guy, I have no doubt, in practice I always knew, at the beginning I did not know that my way of being was what people call homosexuality, I was aware of it a few years ago, more or less at 15. Currently I study Engineering, studies are fine and I’m not very far from graduation. Finding work will be a problem, but in my sector, luckily, there are few people and some possibilities still exist, but these are all things I will have to face later. I am not publicly out, in fact I would say that I am not out at all and this affects me a bit. Anyway, I cannot risk either at university or at home. At the university it is only about study or girls (but little), I have never heard anything gay, not even jokes, the argument does not exist. In my course we are really few, at most  a fifteen, and it is not the right environment to look for friends, the collaboration among students is only formal, although no one explicitly admits it, there is a race to stand out and everyone has unspoken but evident aims because the environment of our faculty is very much tied to industry and professors are in fact an excellent launch pad for high-level work. We study a lot, faculty is considered among the best and it is really, but the human environment is competitive and in essence very unfriendly. My parents are under 55, they married young. But I do not have much dialogue with them. In practice, I keep them afar off, when the opportunity to talk a little comes I prefer to talk about stupid things or university things that do not matter to me at all. I do not know if they ever wondered why I never had a girlfriend, since all my so called friends have a girl.  Anyway, my parents don’t ask questions. From a bit of phone conversation between my mother and my aunt I can deduce that according to my mother I have postponed after graduation the idea of catching a girl, however, this means that she noticed something abnormal but not only, that also means she talked about me with her sister, which makes me really bother. My dad is a bit different but he is succubus of my mother and, maybe I'm wrong, but I thought this was one of the reasons for my homosexuality: I do not want to be succubus of anyone. My father's dependence on my mother, in my opinion, has something excessive, pathologic. Nevertheless, it does not make sense to try to make a clear speech neither with my father nor with my mother, so the problem does not exist at all. I have passed my phases of interest in pornography, even exaggerated, but then interest has dropped. More than sex I needed a true friend looking a bit like me, I'm talking about a gay friend, if it was not just friendship, it would certainly be better, but it did not seem to me an indispensable condition. At the university I do not even try, because the risks are too many and there we are just reciting as in the theater. I tried the chats, those a bit hard but they were really a squalid.  After a while, practically by chance, on a Sunday morning I accompanied my parents to Mass. Time ago, let's say up to three years ago, I was in the parish circles and the environment was quite familiar to me. My parents have known the parish priest for years and were talking to him. I sat on a step waiting for them and saw a group of guys playing football, more or less a dozen guys, but they were not kids, they could have had more or less my age. One of those guys immediately caught my attention, he smiled, indeed laughed very directly, was a handsome, tall, thin guy with light brown hair, smooth, short but not too much short, for a moment we crossed eyes and for me it was like a lightning strike. He had beautiful eyes, just looked like a happy guy. But the thing ended there, my parents came and we went home, but I kept thinking about that guy. Then the study week resumed and I ended up thinking about something else. On the following Sunday I offered to accompany my parents to Mass, just because I was hoping to see that guy again. After the Mass I looked into the yard and the guy was there, he was sitting on a step talking to other guys, he saw me and gestured with his hand, I responded the same way, he obviously remembered me. Then I left and another week passed. In short, I went every Sunday to Mass and after a few weeks I started exchanging a few words with that guy, whom I will call Luca. I was comfortable with him, he was very direct and at the same time non-intrusive and then he was a smiling guy. We started to greet us with a handshake, and he held my hand tight and it was a nice feeling.  One Sunday, and I will never forget it, we had to go to Umbria at my grandmother's house and went to Mass at 7am at the first Mass. I almost got a heart attack when I saw him come out of the sacristy with the dresses on him, coming to say mass. Luca is a priest, I did not suspect it at all. There were few people in the church and Luca made a brief sermon that I still remember. The basic idea was to not judge because we just see the appearances and not the heart of people. That preaching, however, applied to Luke, led me to wonder what the appearance was and what was in his heart.  Of course, seeing that Luke was a priest I was shocked. I kept going to Mass but I avoided looking for him. In the end, after a few days, he was looking for me. Frankly I was afraid he would try to take me back to the sheepfold, but I did not have the impression that the purpose was such, slowly, very slowly, a true friendship was born, of course I carefully avoided talking with him about personal matters but I realized he was comfortable with me and was looking for my company. He lived in the parish, cared for the activities with the boys, and the parish priest trusted him very much but also kept him under control, he told me he would like to have a pizza with me one night but that he could not because he felt controlled and it was a strange speech.  One day he calls me and tells that his grandmother is very bad and he has to go to see her in a country in the province of Varese. He asks me if I am willing to go with him to Milan. I tell him yes and I tell him that we had to get there by car, because getting to Milan by train is easy but getting from Milan to the village could be very difficult. I told my parents that I could stay away for a couple of days and left with Luke at eleven in the morning. The journey was long and in the car we were alone, and so it was almost inevitable that we came to talk about our private. He did not ask me if I had a girlfriend. I just told him: "I have to tell you that I'm gay." And he replied, "Me too." Then followed a long silence. We talked a lot, he told me about his life, that he wanted to do something good and that he was not a priest to escape from something but to find something, he told me that he was happy.  In seminary he had talked about homosexuality with his spiritual father who encouraged him to move forward and do not abandon the road undertaken. He also told me that he was very happy to talk to me and that for him it was like a liberation, because he could be himself as never happened to him. I refrained carefully from telling Luca that I had fallen in love with him, because I would have put him in serious trouble, within me I do not deny having experienced some bitterness and I asked myself many questions. Was Luke really thinking what he was saying or was he saying those things because somehow he ought to do so? Certainly he seemed happy to be a priest and I think he was really, but sometimes even having a close friend or something more can be crucial, especially when the years begin to pass. I told him about me, practically everything, just omitting that I had fallen in love with him and I think he also told me pretty much everything, omitting that he had fallen in love with me. But in a similar situation what could we do?  We arrived in Varese in the evening, we did not go to the village because his grandmother had been hospitalized in the city. We went to see her. Luca brought her the Holy Communion, but she was better and the doctors thought she would leave in a few days. We had to come back, I would have liked to stay at the hotel to talk a little and start the next morning, but I ended up proposing to leave immediately because I did not want to create problems. We left. The journey was very nice, we looked like a gay couple, we were fine, but in the end we both chose to omit the fundamental thing, that is, the "I fell in love with you" that could have upset our lives. I drove all night and early in the morning Luca was back in the parish. The parish priest saw that we were back right away and now he trusts me.  Every now and again, more or less once a month, I'm going to have a pizza with Luca. Of course the situation is strange, but I see him happy and every other thought goes far away from me. We have also talked about gay things, sometimes, but always in a very abstract way and above all we have never talked about us. This story is very strange and I can tell you that among the many hypotheses I had made for my future I never took into account such a situation. Now I go on so, I just need to see Luca serene, even though I'm so afraid that things can change from one moment to the next. If you want, post my mail on the forum. (Obviously the country was not in the province of Varese!). C. C.                     AFFECTIVE GAY SEX Posted by: gayprojectforum - 10-06-2017, 04:19 PM - Forum: Gays and sex - No Replies Dear Project, reading here and there on the Gay Project sites I felt comfortable and I did not feel the same way reading other sites that talk about gay sexuality. I often felt embarrassed in talking with guys about sex and came to think that there was something wrong with me, something that did not work as it should have been. I'm 26 and I have never had sex with anyone. Sometimes, but in practice only a couple of times, I thought that with the guys I met in chat we could even get to have sex, but the impression was quickly denied when I heard what they meant for gay sexuality. Maybe I dream too much, maybe I’m infantile in my way of conceiving sexuality, but I have the impression that with a guy, let's say better, with the majority of the guys I would feel uncomfortable. I'm not sex phobic, I do not have nudity-related psychological complexes, I've been a team-mate for years, and I've never had problems with changing rooms and showers, I do not have religious complexes, I masturbate as all the guys do and I don’t have complexes even on this. Physically I think I'm a guy I do not say handsome but at least normal, but from a sexual point of view I feel a little disadvantaged. I try to explain to you how I mean gay sex, or rather I try to explain how I would have sex with a guy. First of all, I dream of love and not of sex, and it is not a matter of words, I dream of loving and being loved, I dream a true, deep, mutual love. I know that so many people would say that these are just fantasies and that reality is very different but with a guy who does not really love me and I really do not love him, I would feel absolutely uncomfortable, it  would be a mutual instrumentalization. My purpose is not to have sex with a guy but to create a love relationship that can last in time, which can make us feel like a couple to help us in the real difficulties of life and then that is stable and faithful. I want a guy I can trust not one who speaks in one way and acts in another, he must be my boyfriend and I his, that is, our love must be exclusive, otherwise it is better to be alone. With my guy there should be a perfect consonance, a total complicity to understand each other without saying even a word. But I come to sexual fantasies: first I dream about pampering, because I see it as a sign of tenderness, affection, physical proximity, sharing without reservations even physicality. I dream of sleeping together naked, feeling the warmth of my partner, I dream of being able to join him with my whole body, I dream of caressing him and of course I dream that he also does the same with me. I never, absolutely never, thought of sexual roles, my relationship with a guy must be absolutely equal, in the utmost spontaneity and in total agreement. Never and ever impositions, not even veiled, nor even repeated requests. Relationship must proceed in a totally spontaneous way. It is of particular importance to be embraced for a few minutes, to exchange heat, then, of course, kisses, caresses, hands moving into the hair and hugging tight, naked body with naked body. Then I think also of something more strictly sexual and here I feel very strongly my distance from the mentality of so many guys. You may think it’s incredible, but I have never had sexual fantasies about anal penetration and, I would say, not even about oral sex. Pornography is full of these things but I cannot understand such things because they have never been part of my fantasies. Instead, I think of a sexual intimacy based on intimate genital caresses, to understand the physical sexual reactions of the partner, always under conditions of total reciprocity. I dream of having a partner with a dick very similar to mine, because I would somehow know it already and would know how it reacts. Then I think we would easily get to masturbation, but always having a long time, with long pauses, that is, without considering sex something separate from the rest of life, but on the contrary integrating it with everything else in a totally spontaneous way. And then the relationship would not end with ejaculation, but it would go on afterwards, staying close, hugging, cuddling even afterwards. I would like to add something that might sound stupid but I think it is very important. I have often thought that my way of seeing gay sex would radically reduce the risk of sexually transmitted diseases and, in my opinion at least, would not reduce the pleasure of having sex with a guy. You can imagine the reactions when I talked about such things chatting with guys. Being considered a Martian was the least, many guys often considered me an unrecoverable psychopath, then when I came to Gay Project, I found your article on anal sex and I was shocked. I was not a pathologic case! But not only, there are so many guys who think more or less like me though unfortunately it is not easy to find them. Project, I quote below the mail I received from a guy after we had talked a bit on chat. I think it may be indicative. "But are you kidding me? Cuddles? How old are you? You have to start getting some real experience, you have to wake up! If you like, [Sorry, Project, I apologize for the vulgar expression] I'm available to fuck you and I think you'll like it. So many guys act like fussy persons, but then, when they understand what sex really is, they don’t stop anymore." Perhaps another guy's mail is even more interesting. "Alt! Stop! If you're out of your head I'll leave you right away. I have enough psychopaths, I'm just looking for sex, I told you so clearly and I do not have time to lose, so bye and I block you right away." I also received a serious email and I have to say the truth, I thought he was the right person. I thought a lot about what I should have answered and in the end I sent my long and meditated email. Obviously I didn’t get any answer and that user disappeared from the chat. I think that falling in love and feeling the love of the partner it’s really beautiful, but to me it never happened. I do not know if it will ever happen, but I still do not give up on my dreams to find answers, which would not be what I'm going to look for. At least on Gay Project I feel I'm not alone. If you want to post this mail do it, maybe my letter can help somebody else not to feel alone. L.V.   GAY LOVE AT THE TIME OF SPANISH FLU Posted by: gayprojectforum - 10-05-2017, 09:37 PM - Forum: True gay stories - No Replies I'm deeply grateful to the reader of Parma who wanted to transcribe for Gay Project, authorizing the publication, some letters found in an attic of a farm he owned in the province of Parma. It is a touching document, a homosexual love story at the time of the great war and the Spanish flu of 1918-1919. Text notes, that I added in order to make reading immediately understandable, are in square brackets. Homosexuality comes out of these letters as a value. There is also an absolutely exceptional figure in the panorama of the era, a heterosexual lawyer of Brescia, former captain of the army at war, who regards homosexuality as an absolutely natural thing and helps two gay guys, one of whom had been at the front with him, to realize their dream. To make the non-Italian reader able to understand the climate in which events took place, I remember that the Kingdom of Italy completed its territorial unification only in 1870, with the annexation of Rome. Before 1866 Venice belonged to the Austro-Hungarian Empire and in 1866 it was annexed to Italy, which since 1861 had organized into a Kingdom around the King of Sardinia Vittorio Emanuele II. The city of Trieste remained an Italian language enclave in the Habsburg Empire until 1918, when was annexed to Italy after the end of World War I. In October 1917, the Kingdom of Italy suffered the heavy defeat at Caporetto by the Austro-Hungarian army. The Austrians invaded Veneto to the River Piave. The commander in chief of the army, General Luigi Cadorna, was replaced by General Armando Diaz, who managed to stop the Austrians on Piave. Vittorio Veneto is a city which assumed the name of Vittorio in 1866 in honor of the first King of Italy Vittorio Emanuele II. From Vittorio Veneto started the great Italian counter-offensive that forced the Austro-Hungarian army to surrender. Quinto is a village in the province of Treviso, not far from the Piave front. I translated the letters of the protagonists into English. Letters were written in a rather correct Italian, a sign that the protagonists, while being peasants, had a minimum of instruction, which at that time was not common. Venetian dialect expressions are scattered here and there. “Quinto, Sunday, May 25, 1919. Dear Joseph, finally, thank goodness, I can write you something good. It seems that this curse is slowly going [This is the Spanish flu, the most terrible pandemic flu that history remembers. In the world about 20 million people died of “Spanish”, at least 375,000 died in Italy, but if the aggravating effects of Spanish flu on other pathologies are considered, the number rises to 650,000. In some countries, in that terrible 180 days between the end of 1918 and the early 1919, some 70% of the population disappeared], I lost all my family, my dad and my mom, my two brothers and my sister, Antony of Aunt Bepa, has rescued because he went to Valdobbiadene before the start of this plague and stayed there. But here in the plain they have buried so many dead that the graveyard was not enough. I was still in the army and when I was dismissed, my dad just ordered me not to go back to Quinto, that there were fevers and many people died, and sent me to Aunt Bepa and I was there for four months, but there too the fear was great, we didn’t even go to mass on Sunday. Every family with the beasts in the middle of the countryside and to speak, in the voice, just from afar. What happened in Quinto we knew from the parish priest who buried them next to each other. Then, about month ago, no one died anymore and the doctors told us that we could come back. And then Antony remained with Aunt Bepa and I went down to Quinto, but there was no one, I was in the graveyard to see the crosses, crying desperately that there was no one of my relatives, and even the beasts, there was nothing. The parish priest gave me some money that my father and given him for me. Joseph, for us the war was not enough, we had even to face this other disaster; we, born in 95, we had to fight throughout the whole war and, thanks goodness, we pulled our feet out of this curse. But now we are still alive and we still have the strength to go on. Do you remember the 15 (year 1915) when this hell began? We hoped to go to war together, but what could we know about war? They had told us so many stupid things, but we believed in those things and then to the front we had to get out of the trench praying all saints because they fired at us with the machine guns, Joseph, we survived the hell of Isonzo and Caporetto and be blessed Diaz be blessed Diaz because he was the one who saved our homeland, because we were fighting just for despair because Veneto, our land,  just that of our own house, we already saw it in the hands of the Austrians. But when Diaz arrived for us it was terrible, you were sent on one side and I on the other, but these assassins who hanged Battisti [Cesare Battisti, Italian irredentist patriot, hanged from the Austrians in Trento on July 12, 1916] we threw them out from our homeland. We were on the Isonzo at the end of the 16 [1916] and do you remember when we were told that Cecco Peppe had died? [Dialect name commonly used for Francesco Giuseppe, Austrian emperor, dead on November 18, 1916] we all lifted the flag and thought the war would be over soon but it was not over. How I thought of you in the trench and I could not even write because letters were just for family, and I prayed God from morning to night to save both of us and if one had to be taken it would have been better to take me, because without Joseph I could not live. They have been bad years, Joseph, without you, and then in the evening of November 4 of the past year, they made us all arrayed and the colonel read the victory telegram, I just burst crying like a little child but all were crying, the war was over and we were alive! I was just thinking about you, praying to God that I could see you again. I tried to give me courage and went to the telegraphist and asked him for news of the soldier Joseph B. but he told me that the confusion was such that no one could have heard of a single soldier. I thought that they would dismiss us and let us go immediately and I would come to look for you but I did not know where and then I wrote to the parish priest to know news about you and he told me that you had written to him after the armistice and that you were alive and were at Vittorio and we would be soon back at Quinto but dismissing was delayed week by week and in the whole disaster it was a good thing, just in those days mom died and dad wrote to me that I did not have to go back to Quinto if fevers did not pass, then in five days they all died. When I read the letter from the parish priest I was so desperately crying that the captain saw me and sat next to me and I made him read the letter and he hugged me. Now I have only you and I know from the parish priest that you are still in Vittorio, fortunately the Lord did not take your mother even if he took your dear father. The war took away poor Angiolino, I knew this months ago, and also for you still remains only mom. I cannot wait to hug you, but you will not even recognize me because the war has made me ugly, I was wounded on my left arm but I move it well, I still have a big scar of a splinter and it’s already a great thing that I survived, so the surgeon told me, because it was a bad wound. I cannot wait for the moment that I can re-hug you, if God has done this miracle that we are alive, he has done this as a sign that we must love each other well. I love you, Joseph, like a brother and more than a brother. Anthony”(1)   “Vittorio, Friday, June 6, 1919 My dear Antonio, I had your letter yesterday and it would come much earlier if you had brought it to me on foot. You know well the happiness I've experienced, now we are alive and of those who no longer exist even the count is lots. Antony, how much I want to hug you, but I have to be here with the regiment, they say that they are finally dismissing us. Put a flower on my father's cross and give a prayer to Angiolino because he does not even have a cross and who knows where he is, my poor brother, he died at 21 years, certainly he can look at us from paradise. What I passed was ugly but it was not really terrible, but what I saw was really terrible. I served a much earlier much earlier s a nurse and saw guys dying, they came with a wound that seemed a little thing, we did as much as possible but you can imagine the conditions, the wound was infected and the guy died, almost half of the wounded soldiers died in a couple of days. If I remember those things I lose the desire to live, I cannot forget such things. We went to war without understanding anything and we saw hell, the real hell. Antony, now I would cheer you up and kiss you because I do not want to think about the dead that I will not forget forever but I want to think of my Antony. The medical captain told me that as a civilian I could work in a hospital in Treviso because if you has been in the army in health services the place is up to you, but I want to go back to Quinto and I want to be embraced with you the rest of life, you have a beautiful big farm, mine is just nearby and this is the sign that we too must be one. What will people say we do not know, but we should not be afraid of anyone and then to you only Aunt Bepa has remained in Voldobbiadene and to me it was only my mother who is almost sixty years old. My mom can stay with us, the other relatives are far away and they are all old, or we can sell everything away, yours and mine, and go to another place even though my mom always says she wants to die here. We are only two and in addition we have my mother but we are young and we like to work, and then you at your home and I at mine with my mom but all day we’ll work together, there is a little money for a few beasts and I think that we could live well. But there is one thing that makes me feel bad, the parish priest has written to me that there is Gina's daughter, who is twenty years old and who would like so much to know me, and wrote me just so "if it is not she will be another, but be sure we’ll find you a wife." And this thing worries me, it is something that should not happen, and here in the country there are few men, and in particular few young men, or there aren’t at all, and there are a lot of women. I do not like this story, if I want a woman, I choose her and if I don’t  I’ll remain single without marrying, it is not a duty to have a wife and I'm not going to get married. If I sell everything away and go far away from Quinto, what will you do? I thought about going near Parma and buy some land there, then we could work hard with beasts and we know how to do it. Please answer me as soon as you receive this teller because I'm too eager to wait. I love you as a brother and more than a brother. I give you my wishes for your name-day that is in eight days! I think I can be at Quinto at the end of June, now it seems certain. Your Joseph.”(2)                    “Fifth, Friday, June 13, 1919. Dear Joseph, Thanks for the wishes I can only receive from you because now you are my whole family. I thought about the things you wrote and, from some things that he says and that make me understand his thoughts, it seems to me that the parish priest aims to find a wife for me too, so we really have to go because we would not be able to live here. I cannot wait for the time and the moment I can re-hug you. As soon as you come here we have to get advise by a captain I met at the front, who is lawyer in Brescia, I wrote to him and he told me he will help us for all the legal problems of the contract, he is a good person and I trust him, he said he does not want to be paid because when you saw war and death close, when you are dismissed, things are no longer as before. We will not say anything to the parish priest as you come to Quinto, first of all we have to write to the captain, we go to Brescia and give him all the documents and he will care about, and then I think there is already a wealthy man who wants to buy the land, because he already has a great piece of land on your border and mine, he is a rich man and we cannot deal directly with him, he has already made me hear the voice from the parish priest. However, we have to sell the land, we do not have to throw it away. Joseph, then, God be blessed, we’ll meet in to two weeks at most, what a beautiful thing, I can hug you, I want to keep you close to me! Blessed God we are still alive! Antony”(3)   “Brescia, Tuesday 4 November 1919. Dear Joseph, today is a great day for us. And do you know what price we sell? We had said no less than 30 thousand lire mine and no less than 20 thousand yours, but the captain did everything very well and we got exactly one and a half, 45 thousand lire mine and 30 thousand yours. But now I tell you all about it. The captain wrote to Mr. F. telling him that he was aware of his intention to buy our land, but with a paper printed as a lawyer, and told him that had been commissioned by us to handle the sale. Mr. F. answered him asking him for the price but he did not tell him and invited him to Brescia at his studio to meet me too. That's why he got me telegraphed to go running. Then he explained to me all I had to say, gave me a beautiful dress and the most beautiful shoes I have ever seen, sent me to the barber, and they also cared for my hands and nails, I looked like a great lord. Then we went into the living room with carpets on the ground and paintings on the walls and the waitress brought us the coffee when Mr. F. arrived. We presented ourselves, the captain said that we were friends even before the war and that our families had been attending each other for generations, in practice he did everything himself, then after a while we got to the point, we sat at the table and the captain said that our proposal was a hundred thousand lire for both lands together, they had to be sold together because I would go with my partner to open a farm in Parma. Mr. F. widened his arms and said that at that price he just did not feel like buying it, and here came the master shot of the captain, the maid came and told him that lawyer T. was on the phone for the sale of land of Quinto and he raised the phone and replied that as the other possible buyer would not buy the deal could have been concluded in a couple of days. When he put down the phone, Mr. F. felt caught in a counterattack and demanded what price lawyer T. was willing to pay but the captain replied that negotiating with lawyer T. was something between us and lawyer T., it was up to Mr. F. make his proposal and the vendor would evaluate the best conditions. Then Mr. F. said 70 thousand in all. I would have told him ok right away but the captain took time and told him he would let him know. Mr. F. would stay in Brescia one more day to get the answer. Then Mr. F. left, and the captain explained to me that lawyer T. was a friend of his and they agreed that he would call him at that time, but lawyer T. had nothing to do with the land, in short, was a combined thing. In the afternoon the captain called Mr. F. at the hotel and told him that he might agree for 75 thousand and Mr. F. eventually accepted and we met again in the evening and the lawyer made him sign a card, not the contract itself, but a commitment to buy, and there was also a deposit of 15 thousand lire and Mr. F. made a check to the captain of 15 thousand lire. The final act will be signed in November, meanwhile the captain has tried to see for a great piece of land in Parma, a bit on the hillside and it seems we have found it and that it’s a very good pasture. We have to go see it in two days. Then you have to know that another thing happened, I told the captain about the two of us, you have understood me well, and he told me we're proper people, and if he can do something for us, he'll certainly do it. I asked him how we could repay but he said that what he did, did as a friend,  otherwise he would not have been a friend. He is married and has two girls about ten-eleven years old and said that the fact that the Spanish flu did not take away any of his family makes him feel in debt to those who were less fortunate. Joseph, good Lord willing, at the end of November or at most at the beginning of the year, we will really be together. And with 75 thousand lire we can set up a beautiful farm and we can start a new life that belongs only to us. I think of you every moment! Joseph I think no one feels better than I feel at this time. I love you so much. Today is exactly one year since the day of the victory, Live Italy! Antony”(4) __________________ (1) Quinto, Domenica 25 di Maggio 1919. Carissimo Giuseppe, finalmente, ringraziando il Signore, ti posso scrivere qualche cosa buona. Pare che piano piano questa maledizione se ne sta andando [Si tratta della febbre influenzale spagnola, la più terribile pandemia influenzale che la storia ricordi. Nel mondo morirono di spagnola circa 20 milioni di persone, in Italia ne morirono almeno 375.000, ma se si conteggiano anche gli effetti aggravanti della influenza spagnola su altre patologie, il numero sale fino a 650.000. In alcuni paesi sparì, in quei terribili 180 giorni, tra la fine del 1918 e i primi mesi del 1919, circa il 70% della popolazione], ho perso in pratica tutta la mia famiglia, mio babbo e mia mamma, i miei due fratelli e mia sorella, Antonio di zia Bepa s’è salvato perché era andato a Valdobbiadene prima dell’inizio di questa piaga ed è rimasto lì. Ma qua in pianura han portato via tanti morti che non bastava il camposanto. Io ero ancora alle armi e quando m’han congedato babbo mi ha proprio ordinato di non tornare a Quinto, che c’eran le febbri e moriva tanta gente a mi han mandato anche me dalla Bepa e son stato là quattro mesi, ma anche là la paura era grande, non s’andava neanche alla messa la domenica. Ogni famiglia colle bestie in mezzo alla campagna e per parlare, alla voce, da lontano. Quello che è successo a Quinto lo sapevamo dal parroco che li sotterrava uno appresso che l’altro. Poi un mesetto fa ha cominciato a non morire più nessuno e i dottori ci han detto che si poteva tornare. E allora Antonio è rimasto con la zia Bepa e io sono sceso a Quinto, ma non c’era più nessuno, son stato al camposanto a vedere le croci e mi sono messo a pianger disperato che non c’era più nessuno, e anche le bestie, non c’era più nulla. Il parroco m’ha dato un po’ di soldi che eran di mio babbo e lui glieli aveva dati per me. Giuseppe, a noi non ci bastava la guerra, anche quest’altra sciagura ci voleva, noi del 95 la guerra ce la siam fatta tutta e grazie di Dio che ne avemo tirato fora i piedi e poi quest’altra maledizione. Ma adesso siamo ancora vivi e la forza ce l’abbiamo ancora. Ti ricordi il 15 quando è cominciato l’inferno, che speravamo di andare alla guerra insieme, ma che si sapeva noi della guerra, c’avevan contato tante balle, ma noi ci credevamo e poi al fronte a uscire dalla trincea a pregare tutti i santi che ci sparavano a mitraglia, Giuseppe noi siamo sopravvissuti all’inferno dell’Isonzo e a Caporetto e benedetto sia Diaz che la Patria l’ha salvata lui, che noi ormai combattevamo proprio per la disperazione perché ormai in Veneto, la terra nostra, proprio quella di casa nostra, la vedevamo già in mano agli Austriaci. Però quando è arrivato Diaz per noi è stata tremenda, tu da una parte e io dall’altra ma a questi assassini che hanno impiccato Battisti [Cesare Battisti, patriota irredentista italiano, impiccato degli Austriaci a Trento il 12 luglio 1916] li abbiamo cacciati fuori dalla nostra Patria. Noi stavamo sull’Isonzo alla fine del 16 e te lo ricordi quando ci dissero che era morto Cecco Peppe [Francesco Giuseppe, imperatore d’Austria, morto il 18 novembre 1916 ] abbiamo tutti alzato la bandiera e pensavano che la guerra sarebbe finita ma non è mica finita. Quanto ho pensato a te nella trincea e non ti potevo neanche scrivere che le lettere erano solo per la famiglia, e pregavo Dio dalla mattina alla sera di farci salvi tutti e due e se uno se ne doveva prendere che si prendesse me, che io senza Giuseppe non ci potevo vivere. Sono stati anni brutti, Giuseppe, senza di te, e poi alla sera del 4 Novembre dell’anno passato, che ci hanno fatti mettere tutti schierati e il colonnello ha letto il telegramma della vittoria, son proprio scoppiato a piangere come una creatura ma piangevano proprio tutti, era finita la guerra e eravamo vivi! Io pensavo solo a te, pregavo Dio che ti potevo rivedere. Mi son fatto coraggio e sono andato al telegrafista e l’ho pregato di chiedere del soldato Giuseppe B. ma mi ha detto che la confusione era tale che nessuno avrebbe potuto avere notizie di un singolo soldato. Pensavo che ci congedassero subito e ti sarei venuto a cercare ma non sapevo dove e allora ho scritto al parroco per sapere tue notizie e mi ha detto che tu gli avevi scritto dopo l’armistizio e che eri vivo e stavi a Vittorio e ci saremmo rivisti a Quinto tra poco ma il congedo ritardava di settimana in settimana e nel disastro è stata una cosa buona, proprio in quei giorni è morta mamma e papà mi ha scritto che non dovevo tornare a Quinto se non fossero passate le febbri, poi in cinque giorni sono morti tutti. Quando ho letto la lettera del parroco mi son messo a piangere disperato che m’ha visto il capitano e s’è seduto vicino a me e gli ho fatto leggere la lettera e m’ha abbracciato forte. Adesso ho solo te e so dal parroco che sei ancora a Vittorio, per fortuna la tua mamma non se l’è presa il Signore come il tuo caro babbo. Angiolino poveretto se l’è preso la guerra, ho saputo anche questo, e pure a te ti resta solo la mamma. Non vedo l’ora di riabbracciarti ma non mi riconosci che la guerra m’ha fatto brutto, sono stato ferito al braccio sinistro ma lo muovo bene però m’è rimasta un grossa cicatrice di una scheggia e già è molto che sono sopravvissuto, così m’ha detto il chirurgo, che era una ferita brutta. Non vedo l’ora e il momento che ti posso riabbracciare che se Dio c’ha fatto questo miracolo che c’ha fatto campare questo è segno che noi ci dobbiamo volere bene. Ti voglio bene, Giuseppe, come un fratello e più che un fratello. Antonio   (2) Vittorio, Venerdì 6 di Giugno 1919 Carissimo Antonio mio, la lettera tua l’ho avuta ieri che facevi prima a venire tu a piedi a portarmela. La felicità che ho provato la sai bene, adesso noi siamo vivi e di quelli che non ci stanno più se n’è perso il conto. Antonio, quanto ti vorrei abbracciare ma io devo stare qua col reggimento ma dicono che tra poco ci congedano definitivamente. Metticelo tu un fiore sulla croce di mio babbo e dilla una preghiera per Angiolino che lui non c’ha manco la croce e chissà dove sta, povero fratello mio, lui è morto a 21 anno, possa guardarci dal paradiso. Quello che ho passato io è stato brutto ma non è stato proprio terribile, quello che ho visto invece è stato proprio terribile. Io facevo l’infermiere e ne ho visto di ragazzi morire, arrivavano con una ferita che sembrava poca cosa, noi facevamo il possibile ma puoi immaginare le condizioni igieniche, la ferita si infettava e i ragazzi morivano, quasi le metà dei feriti moriva in un paio di giorni. Se mi ricordo di quelle cose mi passa pure la voglia di vivere, non me le potrò più scordare. Noi siamo andati alla guerra senza capire niente e abbiamo visto l’inferno, proprio l’inferno. Antonio adesso t’abbraccerei e ti bacerei perché non voglio pensare ai morti che non me li scorderò più ma voglio pensare a Antonio mio. Il capitano medico mi ha detto che da civile potrei lavorare in ospedale a Treviso perché se hai fatto la guerra in sanità il posto ti spetta, ma io voglio tornare a Quinto e voglio stare abbracciato con te il resto della vita, tu hai un podere bello grosso, quello mio sta attaccato e quello è il segno che pure noi dobbiamo essere una cosa sola. Che dirà la gente noi non lo sappiamo, ma noi non dobbiamo avere paura di nessuno e poi a te è rimasta solo la zia Bepa a Voldobbiadene e a me è rimasta solo mia mamma che è vecchia e ha quasi sessant’anni. Mia mamma può stare con noi, poi gli altri parenti sono lontani e sono tutti vecchi, oppure si può vender via tutto, il tuo e il mio, e andare in un altro posto anche se mia mamma dice sempre che lei vuol morire qui. Noi siamo solo due e in più dobbiamo pensare a mia mamma ma siamo giovani e la voglia di lavorare non ci manca e poi tu a casa tua e io a casa mia con mia mamma ma tutta la giornata si lavora insieme, un po’di soldi per compare un po’ di bestie ci sono e io penso che si potrebbe vivere bene. Ma c’è una cosa che mi fa stare male, il parroco m’ha scritto che c’è la figlia della Gina, che ha vent’anni e che ci terrebbe tanto a conoscermi, e m’ha scritto proprio così “che se non è lei è un’altra, stai sereno che ti accasiamo.” E questa cosa mi fa stare male, non ci voleva proprio e qui in paese di uomini specie giovani ce n’è rimasti poco e niente e di donne ce n’è tante. Non mi piace mica questa storia, se la voglio io una donna, me la scelgo io e se non la voglio sto senza, non è mica un dovere e io non ne ho nessuna intenzione. Se io vendo via tutto e me ne vado da Quinto tu che fai? Avevo pensato di andare dalle parti di Parma e comprare un po’ di terra lì, poi ci si potrebbe dare da fare che noi con gli animali ci sappiamo fare. Ti prego di rispondermi appena ricevi questa mia perché sto troppo in ansia ad aspettare. Ti voglio bene pure io come un fratello e più di un fratello. Ti faccio tanti tanti auguri per il santo tuo che è oggi a otto! Penso di poter stare a Quinto alla fine di Giugno, ormai sembra una cosa certa. Tuo Giuseppe (3) Quinto, Venerdì 13 di Giugno 1919. Carissimo Giuseppe, grazie degli auguri che ormai posso ricevere solo da te che sei la mia famiglia. Ho pensato alle cose che hai scritto e, da certe cose che dice e che lascia intendere, mi pare che il parroco abbia pensato ad ammogliare anche me, quindi ce ne dobbiamo proprio andare perché qua non riusciremmo a vivere. Non vedo l’ora e il momento che ti posso riabbracciare. Appena tu vieni qua ci facciamo consigliare da un capitano che ho conosciuto al fronte e che fa l’avvocato a Brescia, gli ho scritto e mi ha detto che ci aiuta lui per tutte le cose degli atti, è una brava persona e me ne fido, ha detto che non vuole essere pagato perché quando hai visto la guerre a la morte da vicino quando torni civile non è più come prima. Noi al parroco non diciamo niente, quanto tu vieni a Quinto, la prima cosa scriviamo al capitano, andiamo a Brescia e gli portiamo tutte le carte e ha detto che ci pensa lui e poi io penso che ci sia già uno che la terra se la vuole comprare, perché ce ne ha già un pezzo grande al confine tuo e mio, è uno ricco che non ci possiamo trattare noi, lui già m’ha fatto arrivare la voce dal parroco. Comunque la terra la dobbiamo vendere, non la dobbiamo buttare via. Giuseppe, allora, benedetto Iddio, ci vediamo da qui a due settimane al massimo, che cosa bella che ti posso abbracciare, ti voglio tenere stretto a me! Benedetto Iddio che siamo ancora vivi! Antonio (4) Brescia, Martedì 4 Novembre 1919. Carissimo Giuseppe, oggi è una giornata grande per noi. E sai a quanto la vendiamo? Noi avevamo detto non meno di 30 mila lire la mia e non meno di 20 mila lire la tua, ma il capitano ha fatto tutto lui e ci facciamo esattamente una volta e mezzo, 45 mila lire la mia e 30 mila lire la tua. Ma adesso ti racconto tutto quanto. Il capitano ha scritto al sig. F. dicendogli che era sto informato della sua intenzione di comprare i nostri terreni, ma colla carta stampata da avvocato, e gli diceva che aveva avuto mandato a trattare per nostro conto. Il sig. F. gli ha risposto chiedendogli il prezzo ma lui non glielo ha detto e lo ha invitato a Brescia al suo studio per incontrare anche me. Ecco perché m’ha telegrafato di andare di corsa. Poi mi ha spiegato tutto quello che dovevo dire, m’ha dato da mettere un vestito suo bellissimo e delle scarpe che non ne ho mai viste così, m’ha mandato dal barbiere, e mi hanno sistemato pure le mani, sembravo un figurino. Poi ci siamo messi nel salotto, coi tappeti per terra e i quadri e la cameriera ci ha portato il caffè, quando è arrivato il signor F. ci siamo presentati, il capitano ha detto che eravamo amici anche prima della guerra e che le nostre famiglie si conoscono da generazioni, ha fatto proprio tutto lui, poi dopo un po’ di convenevoli siamo arrivati al punto, ci siamo seduti al tavolo e il capitano ha detto che la nostra proposta era di cento mila lire per tutti e due i terreni insieme, che dovevano essere venduti per forza insieme perché io sarei andato con il mio socio ad aprire un’azienda agricola a Parma. Il sig. F. ha allargato le braccia e ha detto che a quel prezzo non se la sentiva proprio, e qua è venuto il colpo da maestro del capitano è entrata la domestica e gli ha detto che c’era al telefono l’avvocato T. per la vendita dei terreni di Quinto e lui ha alzato il telefono e ha risposto che siccome l’altro possibile acquirente non se la sentiva di procedere all’acquisto la cosa si sarebbe potuta concludere. Quando ha messo giù il telefono, il sig. F. si è sentito preso in contropiede e ha chiesto che prezzo era disposto a pagare l’avvocato T. ma il capitano ha risposto che la trattativa con l’avvocato T. è cosa tra noi e l’avvocato T, che lui facesse invece la sua proposta e poi si sarebbero valutate le condizioni migliori. Allora F. ha detto 70 in tutto. Io gli avrei detto subito sì ma il capitano ha preso tempo e gli ha detto che gli avrebbe fatto sapere. F. sarebbe rimasto a Brescia un giorno in più per avere la risposta. Poi F. è andato via e il capitano mi ha spiegato che l’avvocato T. è un suo amico e che erano d’accordo che lo avrebbe chiamato a quell’ora, ma l’avvocato T. con i terreni non ‘entrava per niente, insomma era una cosa combinata. Nel pomeriggio il capitano ha chiamato F. in albergo e gli ha detto che si sarebbe potuto concludere per 75 e F. alla fine ha accettato e ci siamo rivisti tutti e tre in serata e l’avvocato gli ha fatto firmare una carta che però non era il contratto, ma un impegno ad acquistare, e c’era anche una caparra di 15 mila lire e F. ha fatto un assegno all’avvocato di 15 mila lire. L’atto definitivo si farà entro Novembre, intanto il capitano ha cercato di vedere per un pezzo di terra grande a Parma, un po’ in collina e pare che lo abbiamo trovato e che deve essere pascolo ottimo. Dobbiamo andare a vederlo tra due giorni. Poi lo sai che è successa pure un’altra cosa, ho detto di noi due al capitano, hai capito bene, e m’ha detto che siamo persone come si deve e che se può fare qualcosa per noi lo farà certamente. Gli ho chiesto come potevamo sdebitarci ma ha detto che quello che aveva fatto lui un amico lo deve fare se no non è un amico. Lui è sposato e ha due bambine grandine e ha detto che il fatto che la Spagnola non si sia portata via nessuno della sua famiglia lo fa sentire in debito verso chi è stato meno fortunato. Giuseppe, se Dio vuole, alla fine di Novembre o al massimo all’inizio dell’anno venturo noi possiamo stare veramente insieme. E con 75 mila lire possiamo mettere in piedi una bella fattoria e possiamo cominciare una vita veramente nostra. Ti penso ogni momento! Giuseppe io penso che nessuno si senta meglio di come mi sento io in questo momento. Ti voglio un bene immenso. Oggi è un anno dalla vittoria, Viva l’Italia! Antonio   TORQUATO TASSO HOMOSEXUAL Posted by: gayprojectforum - 10-04-2017, 02:13 AM - Forum: Homosexuality in history and literature - No Replies The History of Italian Literature has for centuries presented Torquato Tasso as the incarnation of the scruples and obsessions of the Counter-Reformation, Giacomo Leopardi, who knew very well the work and the soul of Tasso, found in him a poetic affinity and I would say a very deep moral affinity. If you look for substantive affinities between Tasso and Leopardi and do not stop at the surface, you come to the conclusion that one of the stronger contact points, if not the strongest is represented by homosexuality. The “Liberated Jerusalem” is the poem of the impossible love; the final duel between Tancredi and Clorinda make you think  to the famous phrase: "everyone kills the one he loves" in Querelle de Brest of Fassbinder on Jean Genet's novel. Tasso's official story is already complicated in itself, few characters have such a frantic life full of anxieties and upheavals. Tasso was a man of court, of course, the typical jar vase between iron vases, a man who suffered the violence of court life in all its forms, until the forcible hospitalization in St. Anna's madhouse. Mind illness? Segregation for political reasons? Or something else? We will never know. But besides the official story of Tasso there is a secret story that is good to know and in this secret story homosexuality has a fundamental role, but be careful not to assimilate the homosexuality of Tasso to the modern concept of homosexuality. In order to understand Tasso's homosexuality you have to enter the spirit of his time, in a counter-reformist environment where heterosexuality was already a taboo and homosexuality was violently repressed at least in public. At that time the expression “internalized homophobia” would have had a pregnancy that is now largely vanished. There was no talk about homosexuality except in a lesser tone with regard to classical literature. Understanding to be homosexual could be really traumatic and the idea of coming out in public was sometimes equivalent to suicide. I intend to dwell here on a short period of Tasso's life from May 1576 to January 1577. I remember that Tasso in 1576, to the usual feelings of frustration for his poor life to which he had been forced, although he was already a famous poet, had added another cause of concern: the idea of being spied. Caused by the courtier Ercole Fucci, he had slapped him and Fucci had replied giving Tasso some stick shots. A servant had revealed to Tasso that in his absence Ascanio Giraldini, another courtier, had tried to force the door of his room to try to seize some Tasso’s manuscripts. So Tasso wrote to Scipio Gonzaga: "Now, Monsignor Luca, may even tell me that I'm too suspicious! I cannot help but tell you one of Brunello's works. Each time I went out of the Ducal Palace, he asked me for the key of my rooms, telling me that he wanted to use it for love affairs, and I gave it to him, but locking the room where I kept the books and the writings. In that room there was a box in which, beyond my compositions, I kept most of the letters from your Lordship and from Monsignor Luca, and especially those containing some poetic advice [omissis] As I suspected something, I started hunting news, and in the end I came to know from a servant of my neighbor Luigi Montesucoli, that, while I was in Modena during Lent, he saw, when it was already night, that with Brunello also came into my rooms a smith. Then I went looking for that smith and found him, and he confessed that he had been to the Ducal Palace to open a room of which, who brought him there, said he lost the key. Your Lordship can infer the rest. This is one of Brunello's frauds, but there are others, no less beautiful, and I think there are some more important, but I cannot prove it. It is my consolation that I destroyed all the letters from your Lordship and from Monsignor Luca, in which something was said freely, except those in which the details of the Sperone affair are concerned. For now I close here my letter and kiss with every affection hands to your most illustrious Lordship. Letter sent by Ferrara."(1) Monsignor (a term at that time also used for lay people) Luca, of whom Tasso speaks is Luca Scalabrino, a high-ranking cultural character of whom I was unable to find the exact date of birth but more or less coetaneous of Tasso. Scalabrino had fallen in love with Tasso and was kind enough to mention such a thing  to the 21-year-old Horace Ariosto (descendant of the author of the “Orlando furioso”) who, in turn, had reported the news to Tasso himself, who at first reacted badly. On May 9, 1576, Tasso writes to Scalabrino: Luca Scalabrino. - Rome. 1576 "You are absolutely wrong and you cannot be disturbed by this. Writing to me is wrong in substance and form, but I only blame myself. This is Just enough to answer a part of your letter, to which I will answer in more detail after having read not the Greek alphabet one time, but all the Psalms ten or twenty times [after careful evaluation]. Be sure, however, that I have always loved you and sincerely love you. I am not so crazy, that loving you as I love you, I cause your shame with my great ardor. I’m completely master of my secrets and I can, without offending anyone, reveal what I want and to whom I want. Of the secrets of others I speak only so much as it is pleasing to those who entrust them to my discretion. And if I have talked to your father about your disease, against your will, I have done it only because I’m worried about your health, of which I am determined not to worry more than you like; but, for the love I have for you, so that I am satisfied with you, never hiding any of my thoughts, please do not use with me any particular secrecy on some of your affections or projects that are well known to others, do not be angry with me, if anything, by accident, is reported to me, or at least, please, show your disdain jut to me without manifesting it to others, because you cannot do such a thing without showing that you love me just a little and consider me of little value. I said more than I wanted to say: forgive me, because the hand, driven by just pain, has gone beyond will. But now let's move on to another topic. From Ferrara on the 9th of May. Loving brother and servant the Tasso."(2) Scalabrino was afraid of the language of Tasso and sent to Ariosto a letter in which he accused him of having gossip with everyone, and in particular with Tasso well known for not being able to keep the tongue in place. Scalabrino already considered himself in very difficult situations but, shortly after, the fears were set aside and the dialogue between Tasso and Scalabrino became explicit. To Luca Scalabrino, - Rome. 1576 "Your Lordship, with his last letter, asks me for forgiveness for not making me aware of his concupiscible love, and with the letters he has written before, has always shown me to believe that I was angry with him for the fact that he did not reveal to me his carnal desire, and gave me a very honest explanation of his secrecy and silence kept with me. I, who wanted to confirm the decision I made many years ago, that is, to consider Your Lordship not only as a dear and cordial friend, but as the dearest and closest of all friends, that is, as part of my soul, I no longer want to leave you in this mistake and in this deception: and if you don’t deceive yourself, but only want to show so, I don’t want to leave this possibility, nor can I endure that at least in my things and in what belongs to me, you don’t match my naivety, whether silly or philosophical. Know therefore that I did not despise you because Your Lordship had not shown me is love (because you had no obligation), but because you were driven to such an injury as to let Ariosto notify me the question. Not only did you get angry, but you wrote to Ariosto in a way that manifested that you had felt seriously offended by him. Then you wrote to me a letter full of contempt on which I add nothing. You had a good reason to think that Ariosto had revealed this secret to me, who don’t keep my secrets; but you certainly did not have any reason to say so openly with so bad words to him and me, against my reputation. The friend must hide the defects of his friend, and I, who consider myself the most polite man in the world, have never said anything that could displease you, either in this or any other occasion, except that I said of your infirmity to your father and to Monsignor Antenore, for the great concern of your health. And God testifies to me that I did not say anything about you, except for what I knew and believed it was according to your desires. But here I quit my complaint. I will remember only the many kindnesses and loving-kindness I have received from you, and of this banality I will not keep memory, but I will forgive the impetus of those letters and your nature, as I pray to forgive my nature the bitterness of some letters, in which, exhorting you to correct yourself, I used tones too harsh and vehement. We are equal, as it is said, I begin now, and since the love and confidence I have for you have not diminished at all, I will carefully avoid to provoke your anger. I ask you forgiveness for my previous letters. You do not need to ask forgiveness to me as to a superior, because in nothing I’m superior and in many things I am after you. But if you want to do so, do it without hurting me in the act of giving me satisfaction, because the reason that you are asking me for forgiveness is not for the superiority of my person but for that of the cause; and I grant you my pardon, and you give it to me and let it over! ... and stop talking about these things ... I mean, I'm all yours." (3) These are probably the letters the courtiers were looking for in the rooms of Tasso! In mid-December of 1576 the confidence between Tasso and Scalabrino is such that Tasso confesses to Scalabrino that he has fallen in love with the 21-year-old Horace Ariosto, whom Tasso simply calls the Lord omitting the name. To Luca Scalabrino – Rome, Date December 14, 1576 "I saw the Lord's letter, it’s very good, but what? I never doubted his wit, and now I am sure of this and wish him every success. But you admire in him the aptitude to eloquence, and I the disposition to be courtier, for he has learned more about this art within a few months in the schools, than I did in many years in the court. In the end, I do not deceive myself, and speak for the sake of science, not by suspicion or by conjecture; you can believe what you like; but if you were here or were present at one or two of our reasonings, you would clarify in part your ideas; because he treats me so that he doesn’t care to leave me satisfied; for him it’s enough that I cannot be able to make the others understand that he offends me. I love him, and I love him for a few months, because love impressed in my soul an emotion too much strong, that cannot be removed in a few days, by an offense of any gravity; and I hope that time will medicate my soul for this loving infirmity, and will make it perfectly healthy. Certainly I would not love him, because the more his wisdom is loving, and his way of doing towards everybody, the more his particular way of doing towards me seems hateful to me, this particular behavior has just begun, coming from I don’t know what affection, if not from emulation, or from the desire to satisfy others, what I believe most. I call this my love, and not benevolence because, in sum, it is love: I had not noticed it before, because I did not feel waking up within me any of those appetites that love uses to bring, even in bed where we were together. But now I clearly realize that I have been and I am not a friend, but a very honest lover, because I feel great pain, not only because he matches me little in love, but also because I cannot talk to him with the freedom, I was used to, and his absence is squeezing me gravely. In the night I never wake up that her image is not the first to come to my mind, and rethinking in my soul how much I have loved and honored him, and how much he has mocked and offended me, and what is most important to me (since it seems to me very resolute in his decision not to love me), I'm so afraid that two or three times I have cried bitterly, and if I'm saying the fake, God will not remember me. I would hope that if he was certain of my soul, he would have to love me, but how can he be certain of it, being certain of his thought, and judging ex aliorum ingenio (according to the reasoning of others)? And if you, to whom no affection of my soul was ever concealed, and that should have known so long how I can pretend, you doubt it, it is right that he who has less knowledge, doubts it. That’s enough about him."(4) Tasso and Scalabrino exchange letters on Horatio Ariosto even if the language is not always understandable because we don’t possess Scalabrino's letters.   A Luca Scalabrino. - Rome.   "But keep your beliefs (if you believe what you write), that it is good for me to keep my certainty; in fact, I don’t like it, but it hurts me, that I would, if it were possible, don’t know so much inside as I know about this particular. You, however judicious you are, will never be praised for that. That magnanimous courtesy, and that suffering of my overwhelming suspicion, real voices, sonorous and witty concepts, where are they born, and where do they come from? In response, I will just say that, in the future, I will be very careful to give myself in prey to a friend, so that it is not only difficult, but boring, to escape him. Now I approve what I said in other times inhuman, that you should love in such a way that it is easy to stop loving. The counsel you give me, I accept it as dictated by love, although it was first given to me by those who didn’t love me very much; when my bosses, who love me well, sought to create in me that confidence, of which my soul, at the beginning of this affliction, was completely full. I don’t know whether I will use it or not, but because men are not faithful, and I am poor in wealth and value, may God guard my innocence, and here is the end of these speeches. Be healthy. Of Modena on January 6 [1577]".(5)   This last letter is of January 1577. Tasso, disappointed with Ariosto, begins a turbulent relationship with the young courtier: Horace Orlando. Tasso fears that the thing may become of public domain and tries to appear heterosexual as far as it is possible. On June 17, being spied on by a servant, launches a knife against him. Of course, many other elements of a personal nature such as stress for Jerusalem's composition, the frustrations for the misunderstandings he faced, and the obsessive fear of being spied, besides possible reasons of religious, political and diplomatic nature, have influenced in a very complex way Tasso’s biography, but, of course, there is also homosexuality among the elements which have determined his life.  __________ (1) “Ora dica M. Luca ch’io son troppo sospettoso. Non posso tacer una delle prodezze di Brunello. Egli sempre, ch’io andava fuori mi dimandava la chiave delle mie stanze, mostrando di volersene servir in fatti d’amore, e io gliela concedeva, serrando però la camera dov’io tenea i libri e le scritture. Nella quale era una cassetta, in cui oltre le mie composizioni, io riserbava gran parte delle lettere di V.s. e di M. Luca, e quelle particolarmente, che contenevano alcuno avvertimento poetico [omissis] Con questo sospetto cominciai ad andar pescando, e intesi finalmente da un servitor del Conte Luigi Montesucoli mio vicino, che quando io era in questa Quaresima in Modana , vide entrare col Brunello, essendo già notte, un magnano [fabbro] nelle mie stanze. Tanto andai poi cercando. che trovai il magnano, il qual mi confessò d’essere stato in corte ad aprir una camera, della quale diceva il conduttor d’aver perduta la chiave. V.s. argomenti il resto, quella è una delle sue frodi, ma ce ne son molte altre, non men belle: e credo che ve ne siano alcune di molta maggiore importanza; ma io non me ne posso accertare. Mi consola che io stracciava tutte le lettere di V.s. e di M. Luca nelle quali era detta liberamente alcuna cosa, trattone quelle de i particolari dello Sperone. Altro non mi occorre per ora, se non che a V.s. Illustr. bacio con ogni affetto le mani. Di Ferrara.”  (2) A Luca Scalabrino. - Roma. 1576  “Avete il torto in mille modi; e sia detto con vostra pace. Scrivendo a me, peccate in materia ed in forma; ma io non ne incolpo se non me stesso. Tanto mi basta di rispondere ad una parte de la vostra lettera, a la quale risponderò più a lungo come avrò letto non una volta l’Alfabeto greco, ma dieci o venti volte i Salmi: frattanto siate sicuro che io v’ho sempre amato, e vi amo svisceratamente; non sono ancora tanto pazzo che, amandovi com’io fo , debba con tanto ardore procurare la vostra vergogna. De’ miei secreti sono signore, e posso senza offesa altrui, rivelarne quella parte che mi piace a chi voglio. De gli altrui, tanto ne dico quanto piace a chi li commette a la mia fede; e se io altre volte ho discoperto, contro vostra voglia, a vostro padre il vostro male, l’ho fatto per soverchio zelo de la vostra salute, de la quale son risoluto di non volere aver maggior cura di quella che voi vogliate che s’abbia: ma ben vuo’ pregarvi, per l’amore che vi porto, che se io rimango sodisfatto di voi, a cui nulla ascosi mai de i miei pensieri, che non usiate meco estraordinaria secretezza di alcuni vostri o affetti o disegni che a molti son palesi, né dobbiate poi sdegnarvi contra me se alcuna particella a caso, non la cercando io, me n’è riferita; o almeno sfogate meco tutto questo sdegno senza dimostrarlo altrui; che ciò non potete fare, che non diate insieme a divedere che poco m’amiate e nulla mi prezziate. Ho detto più di quello ch’io voleva: perdonatemi; che la mano, spronata da un giusto dolore, è trascorsa mal grado de la volontà. Ora passiamo ad altra materia. Di Ferrara, il IX di Maggio Amorevol Fratello e S. (servitore) Il Tasso”  (3) A Luca Scalabrino, - Roma. 1576  “Vostra Signoria per l’ultima sua mi dimanda perdono di non m’aver palesato il suo amor concupiscibile; e per l’altre sue, che prima m’ha scritto, ha sempre mostrato di credere ch’io sia sdegnato con esso lei, pereh’ella non m’abbia rivelato questo suo desiderio carnale, e rende assai onesta cagione de la sua segretezza e del silenzio usato meco. Io, che ho deliberato di confermar quella deliberazione ch’io feci molt’anni sono; cioè d’aver Vostra Signoria non solo per caro e cordiale amico, ma per lo più caro e per lo più intrinseco di tutti gli altri, ed in somma per parte de l’anima mia; non voglio più lungamente lasciarla in questo errore e in questo inganno: e se pur non s’inganna, ma vuol mostrar d’ingannarsi, non le voglio lasciar questo pretesto, né posso soffrire c’almeno ne le cose mie, e in quel c’appartiene a me, ella non corrisponda a la mia ingenuità, o sciocca o filosofica che sia. Sappia dunque, ch’io non mi sdegnai perché Vostra Signoria non mi scoprisse il suo amore (c’a a questo per nessuna ragione voi eravate obbligato); ma mi sdegnai perché voi vi recaste a cosi grande ingiuria che l’Ariosto me n’accennasse un non so che. Non solo vi sdegnaste, ma a lui scriveste in modo che ben si poteva comprendere che vi riputavate offeso da lui gravemente. A me poi scriveste una lettera piena di tanto disprezzo, che nulla più. Confesso c’avevate occasione di dolervi fra voi stesso, che l’Ariosto avesse palesato questo secreto a me, il quale so mal tacere i miei propri secreti; ma certo nissuna ragione voleva che, per cosa di si poca importanza, cosi apertamente fosser da voi dette parole cosi acerbe e a lui e a me medesmo contra la mia riputazione. L’amico deve ricoprire i difetti de l’amico; ed io, che sono il più loquace uomo del mondo, non ho mai detto cosa alcuna c’a voi possa spiacere, né in questa né in altra occasione; se non solo che palesai a vostro padre ed a m. Antenore la vostra infermità per soverchia gelosia de la vostra salute. E Dio mi sia testimonio, che di nissun altro vostro particolare ho io ragionato, se non in quel modo ch’io ho saputo, non che creduto c’a voi fosse caro. Ma sia qui il fine de le mie querele. Io mi ricorderò solamente le tante cortesie ed amorevolezze ch’io ho ricevuto da voi; e di questa baia non terrò memoria, ma perdonerò l’impeto di quelle lettere a la vostra natura; si come prego voi a perdonare a la mia l’acerbità d’alcune lettere, ne le quali, esortandovi al purgarvi, usava luoghi troppo aspri e veementi. Siam patti e pagati, come si dice: da ora inanzi io, non iscemando punto né de l’amore né de la confidenza che ho in voi, mi guarderò di provocar la vostra collera. Io vi dimando perdono de le lettere passate: a voi non occorre dimandarlo a me com’a superiore, peroché io in nessuna cosa vi sono superiore, e in molte vi cedo. E se pur volete usare questa creanza, usatela senza offendermi, mentre volete sodisfarmi: che non la superiorità de la persona, ma la superiorità de la causa mi fa meritevole che da voi mi sia chiesto perdono; ed io vel concedo, e voi concedetelo a me, e brindisi!... e più non si parli di queste co... In somma, io son tutto vostro.” (4) A Luca Scalabrino – Roma Datata 14 dicembre 1576  “Ho veduta la lettera del Signore, bella certo, ma che? De l’ingegno suo io non dubitai mai, ed ora ne son certissimo e spero di lui ogni gran riuscita. Ma voi ammirate in lui l’attitudine a l’eloquenza, ed io la disposizione a l’esser cortigiano, perché ha più appreso di quest’arte in pochi mesi ne le scole, ch’io non ho fatto in molti anni ne la corte. In somma io non m’inganno, e parlo per iscienza, non per sospetto, per congettura; voi credete quel che vi pare; ma se qui foste o vi trovaste presente ad uno o due de’ nostri ragionamenti, vi chiarireste in parte; perciocché egli tratta meco in modo, che non si cura di lasciarmi soddisfatto; gli basta solo ch’io non possa far constar ad altri ch’egli m’offenda. Io l’amo, e son per amarlo anco qualche mese, perché troppo gagliarda impressione fu quella, che l’amor fece ne l’animo mio, né si può in pochi dì rimovere, per offesa quanto si voglia grave; pure spero che il tempo medicherà l’animo mio di questa infermità amorosa, e ’l renderà intieramente sano. Che certo io vorrei non amarlo, perché quanto è amabile l’ingegno suo, e la maniera in universale, tanto dee a me parer odioso un suo particolar procedere verso me, cominciato da poco in qua, e nato non so da qual affetto, se non forse da emulazione, da desiderio di soddisfare altrui, il che più credo. Chiamo questo mio amore, e non benevolenza perché, in somma, è amore: ne prima me n’era accorto e non me n’accorgeva, perché non sentiva destare in me nessuno di quegli appetiti che suol portare l’amore, anche nel letto, ove siamo stati insieme. Ma ora chiaramente mi avveggio ch’io sono stato e sono non amico, ma onestissimo amante, perché sento dolore grandissimo, non solo ch’egli poco mi corrisponde ne l’amore, ma anche di non poter parlar con esso lui con quella libertà, ch’io soleva, e la sua assenza m’affligge gravissimamente. La notte non mi sveglio mai che la sua immagine non sia la prima ad appresentarmisi, e rivolgendo per l’animo mio quanto io l’abbia amato ed onorato, e quanto egli abbia schernito ed offeso me, e, quel che più mi preme (parendomi troppo indurato ne la risoluzione di non amarmi), me n’afliggo tanto, che due o tre volte ho pianto amarissimamente, e s’io in ciò mento, Iddio non si ricordi di me. Spererei che se egli fosse certo de l’animo mio, sarebbe costretto ad amarmi, ma come ne può essere egli certo essendo consapevole del suo, e giudicando ex aliorum ingenio. E se voi, al qual nessuno affetto de l’animo mio fu mai celato, e che ’n tanti anni dovreste aver conosciuto quanto io sappia fingere, ne dubitate, ben è ragione ch’egli, che n’ha minor conoscenza, ne dubiti. Tanto basti intorno a lui.”  (5) A Luca Scalabrino. — Roma.  “Tenetevi pur voi la vostra credenza (se pur credete quel che scrivete) ch’a me giova d’attenermi a la mia certezza; anzi, non mi giova, ma mi noce, che vorrei, se fosse possibile, non saper tanto a dentro quanto io so di questo particolare. Voi per giudizioso, non sarete giammai per questa ragione laudato. Quella magnanima cortesia, e quella pena del mio soverchio sospettare, voci in vero e concetti sonori ed arguti, ove nascono, ed onde vengono? Per risposta altro non dico, se non che per l’avvenire, mi guarderò molto di darmi così in preda ad alcuno amico, che mi sia poi non solo difficile, ma noioso, il ritormigli. Ora approvo quel detto che altre volte riputai inumano, ch’in guisa si debba amare, che sia facile il disamare. Il consiglio che mi date, accetto da voi come amorevole, se ben m’è stato prima dato da coloro che non molto m’amavano ; ove i padroni, che ben mi vogliono, cercavano di generar in me quella confidenza, de la quale l’animo mio, nel principio di questa briga, era in tutto pieno. Non so però s’io l’userò o no, ma perché ne gli uomini non è fede, ed io son povero di fortuna, e di valore, custodisca Iddio la mia innocenza, e qui sia fine a questi discorsi. State sano. Di Modena il 6 di Gennaio [1577]”.  Pages (55): « Previous 1 ... 44 45 46 47 48 ... 55 Next » Jump to page: