In 2007, a family judge from Murcia, Fernando Ferrín Calamita, removed the custody of the daughters from a woman for being a lesbian, with arguments in line with her middle name: “It is the homosexual atmosphere that harms minors and that significantly increases the risk that they will also be”. Nor had he allowed a girl to be adopted by the mother’s female partner.
It had been two years since 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 steps back following the Calamita school with a measure that will leave several civilian orphans.
In the 1980s, a new relational archetype emerged: the “gay best friend”, who was supposed to be fun, funny and unfunny. The stereotype was very profitable for the jokes and the party, smeared by the patina of Loco Mía that hyperbolized the dressing. The television series was enriched with this character with a singing voice, who advised on the perfect handbag. The pain, the stings of marginalization and even violence, which did surface in cinema and literature, rarely came out. Their spaces continued to be silenced.
And, despite the fact that the bulk of society claimed their rights, they continued to be expelled from work, receiving insults or beatings. Homosexuality was not treated as a serious issue, stigmatized in society although tolerated (in its own skin) by its elites. “I’m tired of hiding and lying by omission”, declared the actress Ellen Page, when she decided to make public that she was a lesbian.
In Una homosexualidad propia (Destino), Inés Martín Rodrigo, an excellent cultural journalist and winner of a Christmas, confesses that she had no references as a child. He was born in 1983, and at school they called him cavallot. According to the RAE, this is defined as “a woman who, due to her corpulence, looks like a man”. The word hit her for years; he liked the ball and the Scalextrix, he didn’t have Barbies, he took refuge in reading. And it was found.
I had lunch with her a couple of years ago. He told me about the couple. 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’re a great couple. There is no way they think they can mate with someone of the same sex.
Inés’ mother died of cancer when she was 14 years old: “I spent my entire youth sad, until I was able to remember her with the same joy that her face always exuded.” He admits that he could never say to her: “Mom, I like women”. Martín, a discreet woman, says that she is not brave, but that in critical moments you have to step forward. “Without fear. With pride”.
Since the 18th century, the concept of progress gave rise to civilization, right and left. Today, the populist whip makes the ideology of cunyadism, which challenges consensus and undermines freedom. Especially the sexual one. Rainbow flags are torn down and hate crimes against the group doubled last year.
Some parties announce the retreat without blinking, ready to straighten the old order of what does not consider the different as equal. It’s not just Falangist nostalgia. In Poland there are free spaces for LGBTIQ people. And in Hungary you can be arrested if you say the word gay. The phobia spreads and a stinking nostalgia celebrates this archaeological morality that pursues, as Abascal says, “the silliness of the genre”.
