Arcigay

Flags of Arcigay on national Gay Pride 2004
Named after	ARCI
Founded	1980; 44 years ago (1980) (Palermo)
Founder	Marco Bisceglia
Type	Gay rights
Headquarters	Bologna, Italy
Location	Bologna, Italy
President	Natascia Maesi
Secretary	Gabriele Piazzoni
Key people	Franco Grillini, Nichi Vendola
Main organ	Congress
Affiliations	ILGA, ILGA Europe, IGLYO, TGEU, ALDA, Aids Action Europe
Website	www.arcigay.it

Arcigay is Italy's first and largest worldwide gay organisation.^[1][2] The association was first founded as a local association in Palermo in 1980, then nationally established in Bologna in 1985.^[1] The organisation became known throughout Italy for its campaign for civil unions. The President of Arcigay is Natascia Maesi,^[3] the first woman leading Arcigay since its creation. The secretary is Gabriele Piazzoni. Franco Grillini, a historical figure and previous president of Arcigay, is now honorary president. From its creation to the present, Arcigay has welcomed the birth of many subsidiary associations in Italy's various realities, and there are now several dozen territorial communities, often bounded by the territories of Italian provinces. Founder and president of the territorial committee of the Province of Imperia is the Italian mathematician Marco Antei^[4]

Arcigay has often protested against the Vatican's opposition to homosexuality and LGBT rights.^[2]

History

The creation of Arcigay

The first nucleus of what later became Arcigay was formed in Palermo on 9 December 1980, as ARCI Gay, partly on the emotional wave of a demonstration organized in Giarre for a crime that had occurred about two months earlier. Two young men, Giorgio Agatino Giammona and Antonio Galatola, were killed on 17 October with a bullet each in the head for being gay. It was Antonio's 13-year-old nephew who shot, forced by the two in order to escape the "shame" that their condition as homosexuals procured for themselves and their families.

After Palermo in many other cities in Italy, people started to reunite in small groups. Nonetheless, the national association to which everyone referred did not yet exist as an independent entity, but referred to the ARCI association which grouped together various Italian cultural entities and for the first time gave space to issues pertaining to the homosexual world. Among the first leaders of those movements, we need to mention Massimo Milani, Gino Campanella and Marco Bisceglia, the latter being a priest who was already an adherent of so-called liberation theology, a homosexual himself and a forerunner of gay marriage in Italy, having celebrated in 1975 a so-called "union of conscience" religious union between two men. This caused the priest a suspension from his Catholic Church.

In 1982, again in Palermo, a national meeting of ARCI Gay was held, considered the association's first congress in that it was attended by the national leadership of the ARCI; two years later ARCI Gay posed the problem of institutionalizing and stabilizing its presence throughout the country, which led to the first constituent summit held in late 1984.

Organisation

Arcigay is divided into several subsidiary associations scattered throughout Italy. Here we present the list updated to 2022:^[5]