Franco Grillini

Franco Grillini (C.E.1955 – living), Italian politician.

Quotes by Franco Grillini:

 * communism goes and gays arrive. Natural: communism was authoritarian, we are libertarians.
 * had a secular-libertarian beginning. Inside there was even a gay group, Los Padania, Free Sexual Orientation of Padania. Bossi declared: "We are against all discrimination". Maroni told me that he was in favor of de facto families and gay adoptions: now it's completely the opposite. I always say this to Northern League supporters: "Get treatment, the cat is harboring us in your obsession".
 * Knowing the Italian Catholic Church, knowing Italian politics, knowing the political culture that exists in Italy, which is a culture that goes from clerico-fascism to Catholic-communism, I am absolutely not surprised by this reaction homophobic, this racism - I would call it - real. These are positions that claim to ensure that the Italian parliament follows the directives of the Vatican State. This doesn't happen in any other European country, in any other Western country. We only have a dynamic of this type in Islamic countries.
 * [...] breaks the very strong hypocrisy of the center-right on the homosexual issue [...] The other evening Taormina shouted on a local TV program that he was normal and gays were not. But Cecchi Paone is not the only gay or bisexual candidate of the centre-right. He is the first who has the courage to say it.
 * I'm angry, I'm furious about this matter of Dalla and his funeral. We began and continued with a hypocritical delivery of silence regarding Marco Alemanno. There was talk of a bosom friend, a main collaborator... Marco was simply Dalla's companion, I often met them at the newsstand in Porta San Vitale, they didn't flaunt anything but they didn't hide anything. Lucia is absolutely right. If Dalla had married Marco in New York or Oslo or Madrid, as many Bolognese couples did, he would never have had a funeral in San Petronio, a symbolic church owned by the Municipality but managed by the Bolognese Curia.
 * first openly gay gentleman. After all, we have also had gay ministers and prime ministers. On the first day in Montecitorio I identified about seventy. Believe me, I have the gaydar, the gay radar. And those I didn't catch, they came to confide in me, "I have a family, don't disgrace me, but... do you have the address of some place?"
 * [...] I am living proof that gays, contrary to what homophobes say, don't always think about sex. I have had a satisfying love life, rich and intense relationships, including the one I experience today. But many of them ended because my boyfriends dumped me, "you're married to politics". When you do politics, you are a priest. I fought for something that I wasn't able to experience personally".
 * [...] we changed this country anyway. Gays beat them, they committed suicide. They spat on us. It's not a paradise even now, but gay 15-year-olds now tell their mom. We had a nonviolent civil revolution and some didn't even notice.
 * It was a total war: months and months of chemo in which I was more over there than over here. But I said to myself: it's not time to die. I reacted tooth and nail, I did the treatment exactly as the doctors said and for now we are saved. Even with many aches and pains and a chronic illness: I am a man who needs assistance. But I have no intention of hiding: I lived through the entire AIDS era, when the disease was considered a fault, something to be ashamed of, and I said to myself: I speak from the rooftops about myeloma. And I show myself: I place myself in the wheelchair and let myself be pushed.
 * [...] Marx and Engels were a bit homophobic. There is a letter in which Engels writes to Marx commenting on the first LGBT movements in Germany and says: if they win we will have to walk around in tin underwear...
 * When the Renzi government placed its vote of confidence, a technician was called to Rome, a magistrate from Bologna, to quickly reformulate the law and fury in the night. He wrote the article on adoptions in order to satisfy Alfano because there was no longer stepchild adoption, but giving magistrates the possibility of granting it every time a couple requests it.