Coming Out with "husband and husband". Confessions of a gay son

Article of 14 May 2013 by Valeria Bellantoni taken from the site Calabria on web

How will Giacomo's family react to the announcement of getting married to Miguel in Spain? The young pediatrician Gianluca Tornese tells him in his novel Husband & husband Published by magnets (Claudiana publisher, 20129.
An imagined, but likely story, with which the author exorcises his personal fears and in which he finds the strength to make his coming out and declare that he is gay. In the novel there is the story of a family who has to deal with reality and who question principles and convictions.

There is the history of the search for one's identity. Of liberation in the discovery of oneself. There is the naturalness of love, the universal language that unites people. Regardless of sex and any other difference. There is the testimony of a path and there is the commitment to the civil rights of homosexual couples.
In an Italy that declares itself emancipated, but proves to be much anchored to the Catholic tradition and culture, the novel by Gianluca Tornese causes a profound reflection.
And he wants to speak to the heart of those who feel alone and hide for fear of being themselves. We meet Gianluca Tornese in the Salone della Library of the Palazzo della Provincia di Reggio Calabria where, on the initiative of Arcigay the two seas and "If not now when?", He presented his book.

Why did you write the book? What is the idea from? What do you tell?

Everything was born from the announcement of the Zapatero law of many years ago which recognizes gay marriages. I was at friends' house and that evening we imagined what could happen if I had phoned my parents to announce my marriage to him with a man. I had not yet done with them.
So, when I went home I started writing a short story, which then became the first chapter of the book, in which Giacomo, the protagonist, telephones home and announces that he had married, with Miguel, in Madrid. And from there, from that surreal but likely situation, that the desire to go further was born in me and describe the story and I developed the novel husband & husband. The novel was certainly born from the desire to speak with my parents.
And it was a way to exorcise and externalize my fears. My anxieties. And the funny thing is that it was a prophetic story because I hit my father's reactions, my mother, of my brothers. Things went just as I described them in the novel.

So it's not an autobiographical novel but somehow tell you?

In the book there are many things in my life. In the sense that it is not autobiographical in the strict sense, but I have inserted many elements that belong to me and my friends. Especially in the projection of what could arouse my coming out.

About your life. Before this literary experience and beyond this, what do you deal with?

I am a pediatrician. I work in Trieste but are from Brindisi, where I lived up to 18 years. Then I moved to Siena for the University. A transfer also due to my recognizing myself different from the others.

How were you in Brindisi?

He had started to understand that I had something different from the others ... belonging to a family much anchored to tradition and Catholic culture. Even before the eighteen I had started to understand that I had something different from the others. I felt the need to live to fully understand my identity. I went out to understand better, to start living and experimenting with my affectivity.

How did Siena welcomed you from this point of view, has proved to be an advanced city and open to homosexuality?

Siena is a closed place, it is not a very welcoming city in itself. There were not many realities for the homosexual community. I made my first experiences in Florence and in other contexts. I felt alone. And the heaviest thing is precisely the solitude that envelops you when you understand you are gay.
You start asking you who I can say and how. For me it was quite difficult, in the first moments, to share this experience. On the other hand, sharing with others implies a long and complex process of self -acceptance. It is the first fundamental step.

Has you understanding you were gay for you?

For me yes. Because I tried to suppress thought. I said to myself is a moment of confusion. Then everything is back. My turning point was in comparison with homosexual couples who normally live in everyday life. The normality of a relationship showed me reality.
And that is that homosexuality, or rather homo -effectiveness, is not the one that passes through television. It has another dimension. Much more true. In this dimension I recognized myself, identified, accepted. And I said I am also gay. Only later did the time come with the sharing with the family, with friends and with others.

The revelation of your emotional identity to your family came after the novel, but you imagined it in the book. Tell us how it was, what happened?

I took advantage of a serious and lasting relationship with my partner and I took my father aside first and then my mother to talk to him. The strange thing is that mine at the bottom knew it, they had imagined him for at least six seven years, but they had never talked about them. My mother told me I recommend that I don't tell dad who takes a heart attack on him. My father told me I recommend that I do not tell mom who preys a heart attack on her. They protected each other.
Then the phase in which they tried to convert me began. With phrases like: if I had told it before we could have helped you, we would have helped you heal. Things of this kind. They tried for a long time to dissuade me. Sometimes more aggressively. Sometimes in a more subtle way. Sometimes in a silent way.

And have they attributed responsibilities to your partner?

No, as often happens, responsibilities, faults have been given. I was too present a mother. I was a father too absent. As if a gay child necessarily was the product of a family distress. It was a rather hard moment. A complicated path. The early days were difficult. When I was with my partner they disappeared and they didn't want to know anything about this part of my life. Then with time, fortunately, the climate has changed.
Now my partner is part of my family. It is accepted without any problem. There has been a great evolution from my family. I think he also knows him a lot. They saw that he is a person who loves me. That ours is a normal relationship. Just like that of my brothers with their wives. And that there is no strange null. Of transgressive. That two men who love each other are not two who go around with sequins.

In your novel, already in the title, bring the story back to the concept of marriage as a consecration of the homosexual couple relationship.

I face the theme of the wedding in a chapter in which the couple knows Giacomo's friends, the protagonist, in Brindisi, his city. It is also the meeting between a homosexual couple who wanted and chosen to consecrate even before the law their love and straight couples who, despite being entitled to marriage, do not always have the sense of responsibility with respect to life choices.

A che punto è l’Italia, secondo te, rispetto al tema del matrimonio omosessuale?

Siamo il fanalino di coda dell’Europa. Per non parlare degli altri Paesi.

Qual è la rivoluzione culturale che in Italia va fatta per concepire come un fatto naturale e normale il matrimonio tra persone dello stesso sesso. Secondo te perché bisogna essere a favore dei matrimoni gay?

L’evoluzione richiede un lavoro su due versanti. Uno alla base, che si costruisce sulla testimonianza. Se i propri amici, la propria famiglia accolgono la coppia gay sposata ciò significa che già nei piccoli nuclei sociali, dove si compie la maturazione della cultura, la diversità viene approvata ed accettata come un fatto normale.  
L’esempio, la testimonianza infrangono gli stereotipi culturali che ci fanno crescere con l’idea che l’amore ed il matrimonio debbano essere concessi solo a due persone di sesso opposto. Poi c’è un processo verticale che proviene dall’alto e consiste nel riconoscimento dei diritti civili. Nei paesi avanzati, come in Svezia o in Inghilterra, quando sono stati legittimati i matrimoni gay non è che tutti fossero d’accordo.
But then, when the union entered normal, it was no longer taken for granted that the other of the couple was of the opposite sex. He was no longer written anywhere that he necessarily the marriage should be between a man and a woman. The regulatory step is fundamental. It comes from cultural evolution and generates cultural evolution. Even the most refractory, in the face of legislative recognition, evolve and adapt. Just as after the reforms of family law, when the different living conditions received legal protection.

You take care of children in life. So you will certainly know a child to grow because you have the tools. You and your partner do you want a child?

Yes, it's my great desire.

Have you thought about how you will have a child? What is the road you intend to go to become a father?

I do not know. My desire is not to have to go to Canada and Spain to do strange things. I wish I could stay in Italy to be able to marry and adopt a child.

How old are you?

Thirty -two, maybe I could do it. I hope. My friends have appealed, abroad, to surrogate motherhood. However, apart from the fact that you have to have several financial resources, I would like to do something as natural as possible.
Without these travels of hope. Without having to wait seven to eight years to complete an adoption procedure. With these long times, there is a risk that the children arrive when the parents are at such an exasperation point, of mystification of this child, who distorts everything. I wouldn't want to get to this.
The desire of a child is there but I would not want to become the obsession of my life. When I chose to be a pediatrician I wondered: how will I always take care of the children of others and not to be envious of their relationship? However, with my profession, despite not having a pure parental role, it is as if the fertility of being a father I put into practice with my patients who, being chronic, follow in the life path.

How did the parents of your patients react instead to your revealed homosexuality?

I don't declare myself. I am not required to declare my emotional orientation in this professional context. I learned that a family who sought information on my account for other reasons and I met my book and my blog. Since then my relationship with them, already very positive, has improved also because they appreciated me not only as a doctor but as a person who fights for civil rights.

From what does your relationship with "Arcigay i two seas" of Reggio Calabria be born?

It was born from the long friendship that binds me to Luciana Bova of "If not now when?". She was the first person I came out with. She made my book known to Arcigay, from there a good collaboration was born and therefore the idea of ​​presenting my book in the palace of the province of Reggio.
Indeed, more than presentation, I prefer to call it "testimony of my path" and I hope that it can help and stimulate reflection on the issues of civil rights and solitude. I hope that my book will help you feel alone in your personal intimate start of coming out.