In 2007, a family judge from Murcia, Fernando Ferrín Calamita, withdrew custody of his daughters from a woman for being a lesbian, with arguments that matched her second surname: “It is the homosexual environment that harms minors and that significantly increases the risk that they are too”. He hadn’t let a girl be adopted by her mother’s female partner either.
Two years ago, homosexual marriage had been legalized in Spain. I will survive, by Gloria Gaynor became the soundtrack of the same country that, during the Franco regime, retaliated against them. Today, sixteen years later, Giorgia Meloni goes back following the Calamite school with a measure that will leave several civilian orphans.
In the eighties a new relational archetype emerged: the gay best friend, who was supposed to be fun, pen and self-confidence. The stereotype was very profitable for jokes and parties, smeared by that patina of Loco Mía that hyperbolized mannerisms. The television series were enriched by that character with the high-pitched, singsong voice, which he advised on the perfect bag. Pain rarely appeared, the stings of marginalization and even violence, which did surface in cinema and literature. His were still silenced spaces.
And, despite the fact that the bulk of society claimed their rights, they continued to be kicked out of jobs, insulted or beaten up. Homosexuality was not treated as a serious issue, stigmatized in society although tolerated (in its own flesh) by its elites. “I’m tired of hiding and lying by omission,” actress Ellen Page declared when she went public that she was a lesbian.
In A Own Homosexuality (Destiny), Inés Martín Rodrigo, an excellent cultural journalist and winner of a Nadal, confesses that as a child she had no references. She was born in 1983, and at school they called her a tomboy. According to the RAE, she defines herself as “a woman who looks like a man in her corpulence.” That word hit her for years; she liked the ball and the Scalextrix, she did not have Barbies, she took refuge in reading. And she found herself.
I remember having lunch a couple of years ago with her. He told me about her partner. I assumed he was a man. I acted like those parents who, when they get together with their babies, say to each other: let’s see if they are a couple when they grow up. They don’t even think they can pair up with someone of the same sex.
Inés’s mother died of cancer when she was fourteen: “I spent my entire youth sad, until I was able to remember her with the same joy that her face always gave off.” She admits that she could never tell him: “Mom, I like women.” Martín, a discreet woman, says that she is not brave, but that in critical moments you have to take a step forward. “Without fear. With pride”.
Since the eighteenth century, the concept of progress gave birth to civilization, to the left and to the right. Today, the populist whip makes the ideology of the brother-in-law, the one that defies consensus and poisons freedom. Especially the sexual one. Rainbow flags are ripped off and hate crimes against the collective doubled last year.
Some parties announce the setback without blinking, ready to straighten out the old order of those who do not consider the different as equal. It is not only Falangist nostalgia. In Poland there are spaces free of LGTBIQ people. And in Hungary they can arrest you if you say the word gay. The phobia spreads and a stinking nostalgia celebrates that archaeological morality that pursues, as Abascal affirms: “The nonsense of the genre.”
