Franco Grillini (born 14 March 1955) is an Italian politician and a prominent Italian gay-rights activist.

Career

He was born in

Pianoro Pianoro ( Bolognese: ) is a town and ''comune'' in the province of Bologna in the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy, in the hills of the Tusco-Emilian Apennines, above sea level. Highway SS 65 connects the town to Bologna and Florence across th ...

Province of Bologna The province of Bologna ( it, provincia di Bologna) was a province in the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy. Its provincial capital was the city of Bologna. The province of Bologna covered an area of and had a total population of 1,004,323 inhabitan ...

. During the 1970s, he took part in student political movements. He attended the

University of Bologna The University of Bologna ( it, Alma Mater Studiorum – Università di Bologna, UNIBO) is a public research university in Bologna, Italy. Founded in 1088 by an organised guild of students (''studiorum''), it is the oldest university in continu ...

, graduating in 1979 with a degree in education, and subsequently became a psychologist, psychotherapist, and journalist. He was 27 years old and engaged to a woman when he

came out Coming out of the closet, often shortened to coming out, is a metaphor used to describe LGBT people's self-disclosure of their sexual orientation, romantic orientation, or gender identity. Framed and debated as a privacy issue, coming out of ...

. Grillini entered politics in the 1970s with the Proletarian Unity Party; in 1985 he ran as an

Italian Communist Party The Italian Communist Party ( it, Partito Comunista Italiano, PCI) was a communist political party in Italy. The PCI was founded as ''Communist Party of Italy'' on 21 January 1921 in Livorno by seceding from the Italian Socialist Party (PSI) ...

candidate in the

province of Bologna The province of Bologna ( it, provincia di Bologna) was a province in the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy. Its provincial capital was the city of Bologna. The province of Bologna covered an area of and had a total population of 1,004,323 inhabitan ...

. From 1991 to 2001, he held continuous membership of the Ministry of Health's National Council for the Fight against AIDS. He was elected for the first time to the Council of the

in 1990, and subsequently re-elected in 1995 and 1999. In 1999, he was named president of the Italian Ministry for Equal Opportunities' Commission for the Rights and Equal Opportunities of Homosexual People. Following the dissolution of the Communist Party, he joined the

Democratic Party of the Left The Democratic Party of the Left ( it, Partito Democratico della Sinistra, PDS) was a democratic socialist and social-democratic political party in Italy. Founded in February 1991 as the post-communist evolution of the Italian Communist Party, t ...

, which later became

Democrats of the Left The Democrats of the Left ( it, Democratici di Sinistra, DS) was a social-democratic political party in Italy. The DS, successor of the Democratic Party of the Left (PDS) and the Italian Communist Party, was formed in 1998 upon the merger of th ...

. He was first elected to the

Italian Parliament The Italian Parliament ( it, Parlamento italiano) is the national parliament of the Italian Republic. It is the representative body of Italian citizens and is the successor to the Parliament of the Kingdom of Italy (1861–1943), the transitio ...

in 2001, and re-elected in 2006. In 2007, he left his party, refusing to join the Democratic Party, and joined the Democratic Left movement. Among the legislation Grillini has proposed is a

civil union A civil union (also known as a civil partnership) is a legally recognized arrangement similar to marriage, created primarily as a means to provide recognition in law for same-sex couples. Civil unions grant some or all of the rights of marriage ...

law similar to the French PACS and adding

sexual orientation Sexual orientation is an enduring pattern of romantic or sexual attraction (or a combination of these) to persons of the opposite sex or gender, the same sex or gender, or to both sexes or more than one gender. These attractions are generall ...

and

gender identity Gender identity is the personal sense of one's own gender. Gender identity can correlate with a person's assigned sex or can differ from it. In most individuals, the various biological determinants of sex are congruent, and consistent with the ...

to the anti- discrimination article of the

Constitution of Italy The Constitution of the Italian Republic ( it, Costituzione della Repubblica Italiana) was enacted by the Constituent Assembly on 22 December 1947, with 453 votes in favour and 62 against. The text, which has since been amended sixteen times, ...

. On 28 June 1982, Grillini helped found the Circolo Omosessuale Ventotto Giugno in Bologna, the first gay group to receive government funding. This group would develop into the national group Arcigay, Italy's leading gay organization, founded in 1985. Grillini was its secretary for two years before becoming its President in 1987. In 1988, he called a special session of Arcigay for the purpose of recognizing the presence of lesbians in the organization. Since 1998, he has been Honorary President of Arcigay. He has also founded LILA (Italian League for the Fight Against AIDS), in 1987; LINFA (Italian New Families League - originally LIFF, Italian Common-Law Families League), which aims to promote legislation for the legal recognition of homosexual and heterosexual partnerships, in 1997; and NOI (Italian Gay News), Italy's first gay news agency, of which he remains the editor, on 29 May 1998. He suffer from multiple myeloma by 2016.Dall'intervista
Franco Grillini: «Prima i diritti, ora il tumore: io lotto. E sono più rivoluzionario di Marx»
', ''Corriere.it'', 1º febbraio 2018.

References

External links

Personal website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Grillini, Franco 1955 births Living people People from the Province of Bologna Gay politicians Italian LGBT rights activists Democrats of the Left politicians Italian Communist Party politicians 20th-century Italian politicians Democratic Party of the Left politicians Italy of Values politicians Italian Socialist Party politicians LGBT legislators in Italy LGBT history in Italy People with multiple myeloma