Italy needs to grow up and join its peers economically and socially . Unfortunately this beautiful country is about 20 years behind in both aspects .

Music labels and publicists, producers, agents and all those involved in a celebrities career are often against homosexual artists and celebrities coming out. Would Ricky Martin have been as big a success as he was had he been out from the start?

[Daphne – Or George Michael…And even further back in time, Rock Hudson.]

You might say yes, but if you look at how he was marketed you will see that it mainly revolved around his sex appeal. Few girls would go crazy for a man who is gay and for obvious reasons.

And many good-looking gay men who are involved in the music industry or film industry would never come out not because they want to “keep their private life secret”. They do it because they are afraid that a label won’t sign them because that label will only think in terms of how to market them and getting teenage girls to scream and go wild is often a big tool to use.

It helps sell because sex sells.

And that mantra is what keeps them from coming out to anyone – even to their own families. And once they have built their marketing plan on being a heart-throb they fear that coming out would be professional suicide. And it might very well be so.

And it is not just in the music industry. Actually there are quite a few professional footballers in the UK who are gay. Their team mates know, of course, and don’t care. But they are forced to not let anyone know because of how fans would react. There was an article in Metro about it.

You seem to be talking from the point of view of someone who does not care about what it is like to come out to people. Ask any gay man or woman and they will always tell you that it was hard to begin with.

Then, depending on how their friends and family reacted, they might say that after it became easier. It is a very painful process for the person coming out and should always be treated carefully and with compassion.

I think it is very naive to think that no one cares because many people do for all the wrong reasons, be they values or cash flow. It is a reality that many people are aware of.

Things are changing now, it is true, but only recently. The 80s and 90s were all very different.

What do you mean Daph regarding a misconception?

[Daphne – About the funerals. Surely not.]

Some interesting reading on the subject:
http://www.bssky.org/?page=newsforward&name=bssky.org&article=1931

It was very, very bad taste for Alemanno to do that during the funeral. Dalla was coherent enough to say it himself had he wanted to.

The fact he never did was because it either was not the truth or because he wanted to keep his private live ‘private’.

God help us, the time will come when we’re almost embarrassed to say we’re straight. The fact is nobody cares who you spend your intimate moments with so all these gay ‘come-outers’ would do much better to keep their private matters to themselves.

Straight people do not go around expecting food vouchers for sleeping with their spouses – so just cut it out and carry on with your lives and let us carry on with ours.

Not to be fickle, but which Renato Zero?

Here he is in the early days, a walking jamboree.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwpjBxDzqr0

There are many straight performers who don’t treat women as some sort of sex objects. I admired Lucio Dalla for his work and for his seriousness in his private life and that he didn’t dangle his merchandise here and there, and he WAS popular with the young generation.

He was in fact a true intellectual given his childhood background. He was a piccolo grande uomo. And shame on that imbecile Alemanno. He should not have been given the microphone. One woman said on Domenica In on RAI, quite correctly, that nobody should have applauded him.

Everyone in Italy knew that Lucio Dalla was gay! Great article nonetheless but the premiss is totally false!

It is recounted that once the saintly Dun Gorg was pressed to celebrate mass in a funeral of a businessman, he tried hard to avoid the whole ‘charade’ but succumbed to the pressure of the deceased’s relatives.

During mass he told the congregation that the night before he dreamt about the dead person going down head first straight to hell.

[Daphne – I think it is unfortunate that tributes to the deceased, and personal speeches, are banned. That’s why Catholic funerals in Malta are so awful and impersonal. They shouldn’t ban the personal element just because some speakers are terrible and behave inappropriately. If the speaker is good, this lends dignity, grace and meaning to a funeral which is otherwise very much a case of ‘there goes another one and let’s all stand about on the parvis meeting and greeting and making sure we’re seen.’]

Until we get to the day that a person’s sexual preferences are actually ‘ not a news item’ then we will never really be free from this prejudice way of seeing things. Would it be news value if Lucia Dalla loved chocolate ice-cream instead of vanilla? Would anybody make a fuss about that?

The world will be in a better place when sexual orientation is not of news value.

I was surprised that the Catholic Church in Italy does not allow funerals for declared homosexuals. Well if the church wants to save on burial costs it could save a lot of money by not giving burials to homosexual priests.

We have a long way to go.

[Daphne – I’m quite sure that’s a misconception.]