« OBAMA'S ANTI-GAY GAMBLE | Main | FROM PETER CAMERON'S PEN, A CLASSIC IS BORN »
November 15, 2007
MASSIMO CONSOLI, AN ITALIAN GIANT, DIES

The leading Italian daily, La Repubblica, in its front-page obituary on Consoli, noted that


He originally studied to be an accountant, but after a long crisis over his homosexuality Consoli abandoned his university studies to consecrate his life to those he considered his gay "brothers and sisters." He thought it unjust, he later wrote, "that anyone should have to suffer uselessly just because he loved someone of his own sex."
In 1963 - six years before the Stonewall rebellion in New York City - Consoli, a lifelong anarchist, formed a discussion group, La Rivoluzione è Verde (The Revolution is Green), around the themes of sexual discrimination and social injustice. In 1966 he launched another gay group, the Associazione Culturale Roma-1. The name "Roma-1" did not refer to Italy's capital city, but was a secret acronym for Rivolta Omosessuale dei Maschi Anarchici - Prima fase (Homosexual Revolt of Male Anarchists - First phase).
"Now if you're gay, you just look up an organization in the phone book," Consoli told journalist Elisabetta Povoledo last year, noting that when he was growing up he was forced to send furtive letters to gay magazines abroad, looking to make contacts.
"There was a sense of sin to it all then," he added, "and any meeting was potentially dangerous. It was difficult - you have to understand how it was, we lived in terror. Everything was banned; it was all clandestine, people can't believe that today."
Consoli's precocious gay activism quickly led him into confrontations with the Italian state and the Catholic Church, and as early as October 1967 the Italian counter-espionage service, SID (Servizio Informazioni Difesa), began a file on him. His neighbors were interrogated about his visitors and his habits. This investigation caused him to give up his teaching position in a Roman school and to move to the Netherlands in 1969.

Thus, Kennedy wrote, in the glbtq.com online encyclopedia, "The resulting document, published in 1971, became known as Manifesto Gay; its original title was "Manifesto per la Rivoluzione Morale: l'Omosessualità Rivoluzionaria" ("Manifesto for the Moral Revolution: Revolutionary Homosexuality"). It was a programmatic document meant to furnish the basis for an Italian gay liberation movement, such as had already been established in France, the Netherlands, Germany, and the United States. The work succeeded in stimulating the formation of gay organizations in Italy."
The most important of those organizations was the Fronte Unitario Omosessuale Rivoluzionario Italiano (Italian Revolutionary Homosexual United Front), better known by its acronym, FUORI! - meaning "Come out!" in Italian, and which explicitly stated that it was inspired by Consoli's Manifesto. One of the key organizers of FUORI!, which in 1971 emerged almost simultaneously in Rome, Turin, and Milan, was Mario Mieli (LEFT), a radical student leader of the 1968 generation and another pioneering Italian gay theorist who had already participated in London's Gay Liberation Front.

Mieli was also Consoli's good friend.
Consoli participated in - and often organized - many of the most significant gay events in Italy. For example, he took part in the Gay May Day in Rome in 1972. He organized the first annual Italian commemoration of New York City's Stonewall riots on June 28, 1976, at a time when most of the participants had no idea what "Stonewall" meant. Throughout the 1970s he organized hundreds of conferences, exhibitions, book presentations, theatrical spectacles, and political demonstrations. In 1976 he defied a police ban to organize a public demonstration on the first anniversary of the assassination of his friend Pier Paolo Pasolini.
Consoli was in New York in 1981, where he became a good friend of pioneer gay and

Consoli was the first person to request a meeting with the Roman police regarding crimes against gays. (The police commissioner later said that it was due to his work that these crimes were drastically reduced.) He also met with the mayor of Rome to request - and obtain - the appointment of a liaison officer to the gay and lesbian community.
In 1989, Consoli founded the magazine Gay News Rome.

As a gay historian, Consoli was particularly devoted to the memory of the pioneering German theorist and fighter for homosexual emancipation Karl Ulrichs (1825-1895). In 1867, Ulrichs became the first self-proclaimed homosexual to speak out publicly in defense of homosexuality when he pleaded at the Congress of German Jurists in Munich

Ulrichs (RIGHT) published a dozen books proclaiming that homosexuality - which, invoking Plato's "Symposium," he baptized "Uranian love" (from the Greek urianos, or "heavenly love") - was normal and natural, and arguing that Uranians should have full social and legal equality with heterosexuals, including the right to marry.
Ulrichs' books - two of which Consoli translated into Italian - had

Ulrichs spent the last 15 years of his life in Italy. After rediscovering the tomb of Ulrichs in Aquila (about 50 miles northeast of Rome) in 1988, Consoli began annual pilgrimages there on August 28, Ulrichs' birthday, which grew from a handful of participants to large gatherings that attracted gay activists from all over Europe. Last year, thanks to Consoli's efforts, a statue to Ulrichs was erected at his grave, an event that received international media coverage.
Consoli's other important books include "Homocaust," a massive account of the Nazi persecution of homosexuals he spent twenty years researching, which made available for

"I've lived the history of the gay movement - it's inside me," Consoli told the International Herald-Tribune when it profiled him last year. And, he added, "I feel like a historian, but I was forced to be an activist." The newspaper called the autodidact Consoli an "exact researcher."
Consoli's favorite among his books, "Andata & Ritorno" (2003), is an autobiographical novel in which the protagonist's serious illness prompts a review of earlier periods of his life.
Not long before his death, Consoli completed work on a soon-to-be-published biography of the German gay writer Kurt Hiller (1875-1972), a pioneer homosexual liberationist and close colleague of Magnus Hirschfeld who, in 1929, succeeded Hirschfeld as chairman of the gay organization he'd founded, the Scientific Humanitarian Committee, which fought for repeal of the infamous Paragraph 175, Germany's law criminalizing homosexuality.
In 1998, Consoli's huge archive of gay materials and personal papers was acquired by the State Archive of Italy's Ministry of Culture - but only after Consoli had threatened to take the archive out of the country if the state would not agree to conserve it.
At Consoli's death, openly gay Member of Parliament Franco Grillini - co-founder in 1985 of Arcigay, which with some 200,000 members is now Italy's largest national gay organization - said, "Massimo told with energy and passion, in many texts and essays, the reality of gay and lesbian life both in Italy and internationally, and its history. He has been a tireless promoter of the spread of gay culture in Italy. The death of Consoli, with his example of vision and courage, is a serious loss for the Italian LGBT movement and the culture of our country. We promise that we will carry on the many works of Massimo which remained unfinished."
After reposing for public tribute at the Rome offices of Arcigay, Consoli's body will be buried in the non-Catholic cemetery of Rome, at his request next to the body of his dearest friend, the poet Bellazza, who died of AIDS in 1996.
Massimo Consoli maintained an extensive Web site, including many of his hundreds of articles in both the mainstream and gay press, at cybercore.com/consoli/ . It will be kept up by his friends.
Posted by Direland at 12:47 PM | Permalink
Comments
i m so happy to read the above comments about the personalities i really impressed by them
Posted by: used computer | Jun 22, 2009 7:42:51 PM
You will see gas powered scooters for sale
http://www.world66.com/member/gas_powered_scoote
Posted by: gas powered scooters | Jun 10, 2009 7:30:00 PM
[b][size=15][url=http://medshop.as-you-please.com]ENTER CANADIAN PHARMACY NOW![/url][/size] [URL=http://medshop.as-you-please.com/][IMG]http://img5.imageshost.ru/imgs/090401/c80f76df76a9d2c2f76461855198aaa2/73820174644768e75b0a3c8d74921fda.jpg[/IMG][/URL] [size=10]We provide only HIGH QUALITY and Generic products! NO prescription needed, WORLDWIDE shipping. 100% Privacy, 100% Guarantee!!! Save your money and time, choose only the best! [COLOR=red
Posted by: Suenstere | Apr 1, 2009 9:16:02 AM