Friday, January 7th

Today we all had the morning off. One of my friends, Paul Sherman, and his son were visiting from Seattle so we took them shopping. In the afternoon, we had our first guest speakers for our program, Carlo Chiattelli and Roberto Stocco. They are members of ArciGay Roma, the regional group of the major gay rights foundation in Italy. Paul and my husband, Sundar, joined them and our students for a fantastic presentation. As I explained to the students, we have different themes every week relating to youth in Italy and we try to organize the speakers according to the themes or close to the themes but we also have to accomodate when people can come. So this was one day that worked for them to come and talk to us. Carlo and Roberto told all of us that Arci Gay has a membership (all are volunteers) of 185,000, which is the biggest membership in Europe. Their main goals are to provide services (such as a Gay Help Line which will be included on a White Paper developed by the EU on Minority Rights), and also campaign for equal rights. Some regional groups do fundraising by throwing some parties. What was probably the most distressing aspect of what they presented is that in Italy there is currently not legal protection for gay couples. It was something that was brought by the center-left government in 2007 but a number of forces have stopped this to come forth as a law. The biggest force that Carlo and Roberto talked about and what makes this particularly difficult in Italy has the power of the Catholic Church. Both of them talked about how the church does some wonderful things in Italy but has also stopped some progressive laws to come to be. But both were hopeful that the EU and especially the 2000 European Charter for Human Rights, will be the major push for gay rights to be instituted in Italy. Because of a European directive in 2000, Italy passed a law against discrimination in the workplace against all forms (such as age, gender, sexual orientation etc.). Paul Sherman, my guest, an advocate of gay rights and the president of the board of Seattle Counseling Service, the oldest mental health service for the LGBTQ community in the United States also provided some relevant perspectives for the students in that he reminded us that there are also several parts of the U.S. that do not protect gay rights and that even if we have made great strides in the United States, we should not forget that there is still a lot of work to be done there. On Monday, we will debrief the talk and connect it to the larger goals of the class.