How Italy Became Gay-friendly: The Role of Italian Academia in the Recognition and Enforcement of LGBT Rights

Prof. Matteo Winkler, HEC Paris

Meeting of the LGBTQ caucus

When: 24 January 2018, 14:00-15:00

Place: Badia Fiesolana, Seminar Room 3

In the last decade, whilst Western Europe was quickly moving towards the legal recognition of same-sex couples, Italy seemed to remain immovable in a sort of cultural isolationism. In the face of legal and social progress everywhere in LGBT+ rights, Italian gays were still publicly targeted as objects of hate or irony, or both. When a law was passed in 2016, it was due to the work of a few academics and advocates who, starting in 2008, inquired courts on the status of same-sex couples in the Italian legal system. The conversation they created permeated the Italian society and institutions in a way that has no similarity in other countries.