The rich guy got married. When homophobia runs in the family.

Testimony of Gianluca Tornese and Andrea Piscopo held in the online prayer of Week of prayer for the victims of homophobia and transphobia of May 14, 2021

"Rich guy!”. I began to realize I was gay in middle school, when a classmate called me this for the first of countless times: “rich guy”. I was really naïve and didn't even know what it meant, even though the hint of insult hadn't escaped me at all. Like a good nerd, I went to look up the meaning in the dictionary and a world opened up before me.

A classmate had understood who I was before me. I really should have thanked him, if it weren't for the fact that from then on school became a nightmare, a constant hiding and running away from insults and from what in the early 90s in Salento my peers called "the mass”, that is, a group of about ten boys who surrounded me and beat me every time there was the possibility. It would have just been funny, as some say, right?

And instead the always cheerful and happy child of elementary school life turned into a boy who was always sad and who visibly gained weight. In the ideal world I would have been able to confide in my parents and ask for help, but the nerd in me continued his research on “wealth” also on the various church books that were in the house, in particular on the brand new catechism of the Catholic church, and he understood that it was better to keep quiet so as not to go from the frying pan into the fire.

The worst thing – I think now, almost 30 years later – is that reading those things made me think that after all, if I was so disgusting, my classmates were right to insult me ​​and beat me. Who knows where internalized homophobia comes from...

However, I always diligently avoided talking about it with my very religious family and as soon as I finished high school I decided to continue my studies away from home, to finally understand who I really was. It goes without saying that when such an important aspect of life is kept silent, relationships can only be superficial, and this is amplified even more in a family. What to talk about – if not time and food – when you can't say who you really love?

Once I finished my studies and ended the phase of anguish entitled "if-my-parents-find-out-that-I-am-gay-they-cut-off-my-food-and-I-can't-graduate", I started to think more seriously to the possibility of coming out to my family.

And while I was thinking about it, I wrote a novel called “Husband and husband” (Claudiana, 2012) in which the protagonist, like me, had always tried to hide his sexual orientation from his family and then had informed his parents with a phone call that he had finally gotten married… but with a husband, in fact.

The reactions I imagined for the protagonist's family were exactly those that I then experienced in my real coming out: everyone against it, my mother in tears, my father an insurmountable wall, one brother more open to asking questions, the other completely uncompromising. Thus began the phase in which they tried to dissuade me and "convert" me, sometimes in a more aggressive way, other times in a more subtle, but no less devastating way.

It took years for my family to begin to accept me simply for who I was and, paradoxically, the last resurgence of homophobia was precisely when Andrea and I announced that we would take advantage of the new Cirinnà law and get married.

We didn't do it by phone, but we came back specifically to say it in person and their reaction was an awkward silence, followed in the following days by a series of excuses for not being present at the celebration. What they had finally accepted with difficulty in their private lives was about to be brought before everyone's eyes, exposed to public ridicule.

But in the end this wall too was knocked down and that day at the end of May 3 years ago, my parents, like Andrea's, were there in the front row on the day of our civil union, in front of everyone, in broad daylight; and, together with all the other family and friends present, they blessed us with their presence and their words.

And - I can believe - they too were edified by seeing and feeling the love that surrounded us and continues to surround us, and even the last resistances were definitively dissolved.

I conclude by recycling the words with which the novel ends: “I thought that nothing is simple in life. Just nothing. Indeed... But what really matters is being happy. Happy inside, intimately, intensely. Because if this is the case, despite the storm, this one or any other, I feel happy and safe. Happy to be myself, happy with my job, happy with my friends, and above all happy with you".

WATCH TEXT> Vigil for victims of homotransphobia on May 14, 2021 (Pdf)