Ten years of Chronicles of Ordinary Homophobia (2018-2023)
Edited by Massimo Battaglio
The project "Chronicles of Ordinary Homophobia“, Which we have been following for ten years and whose results are reported and commented on our site homophobia.org, in 2023, intercepted 98 episodes of homophobia (of criminal relevance), which involved 158 victims, of which 106 cisgender males and 4 transgender, 36 cisgender females and 12 trangender females.
Most of the victims suffered acts of physical violence, mostly group. We have recorded 43 individual attacks, 49 victims of attachions to couples or groups and 1 murder. They make 93 victims of violence. The victims of acts of non -physical discrimination are 64. There was only 1 suicide.
The numbers are far from those of the years 2018 and 2019, when, immediately after the appointment of Salvini to the Minister of the Interior, a peak of violence and phenomena of hatred had occurred against all the fragile categories of the population. Cases of racism, anti -Semitism, xenophobia, misogyny had doubled. At the same time, we had to record 215 and 243 victims respectively. 2020 had seen a decline (180 victims), certainly due to the least number of social interactions due to Covid. The phenomenon had returned to grow in 2021 (up to 192 victims) in correspondence with the debate on the Zan law. He then decreased with his sinking (153 victims in 2022). Now we return to grow.
It is important, in observing homophobia, to examine the political context in which it occurs. In fact, it is increasingly clear that the homophobic act wants to explicitly a declaration of political belonging. Maybe it's a cloaked politics of religion, but always political. They are "material" statements made by those who are unable to express their ideas in a different and peaceful way. We have witnessed phenomena of real squadrismo, put in place almost always by groups, rather than by individual people.
The drop in the past two years is also to be read in this light. In fact, the debate on LGBT+ issues with the sinking of the Zan DDL has decreased, the expression of feelings of hatred has decreased. Add to this that the world of information, in the last two years, has become increasingly assets of government parties, which exercise a widespread control. And today, in the government, those who have always denied the existence of homophobia are always denied. It follows that the news of homophobic episodes come more and more from alternative or informal information channels, and less and less from the generalist media. It is to be imagined that, to the decrease in recorded homophobia, it does not correspond to a decrease in real homophobia.
The data of our chronicles are increasingly known, especially since the tent has transmitted them to all parliamentarians at the time of the debate on the Zan bill. It is now usual that, when a journalist is interested in homophobia, he draws on homophobia.org Or contact us personally. Consequently, the theory for which homophobia is a residual phenomenon is definitively buried. Not even the more fanatical media dare more say these nonsense.
The discreet notoriety that our research is having, is also due to the use we are making results: interventions within the collections of essays (such as "Queerphobia", Edited by Gianluca Polastri and Giorgio Ghibaudo, widely presented throughout the national territory), presentation during the events related to Pride, reading during the vigils, television broadcasts such as"On your skin " by Enzo Miglino.
I fear that, following the promulgation of "confidence supplicans", homophobia will increase (even if we have no news of chronicles). It will probably not always result in violent acts but rather in cialtrone declarations by the exponents of the reactionary fringes of the Catholic Church, which are already mobilizing in an attempt to overturn the synodal majority. In my opinion, it is therefore necessary to advertise our research and its results within the Church itself, involve the priests and bishops, move the debate from the plan from the declarations of principle to that of numbers and examples. It must be understood that homophobia is not an opinion but a crime, and does not deserve theological justifications.
