Too Gay to Drive?
One Italian bureaucracy seemed to think so:
An Italian court has ruled the government must pay 100,000 euros in damages to a man who was told to retake a driving test because he was homosexual.
When 26 year-old Danilo Giuffrida told doctors he was gay at his medical examination for military service, they passed the information to the transport ministry, who told him he must repeat his driving test or have his license withdrawn due to his “sexual identity disturbance.”
Giuffrida agreed to re-take his test, passed it for a second time, but the ministry renewed his license for just one year rather than the usual 10 years because of his homosexuality.
Italy is of course a special case within “enlightened” Europe, being so heavily encrusted with so much Catholic detritus handicapping its culture, law and politics. One simply cannot expect the median Italian to understand the implications or requirements of modernity the way one could expect it of the rest of Europe. On the other hand, the “activist judges” of the Italian court did the right thing in the end. Salut!
In the meantime, let’s remember that when bigots insist that they are only concerned with stopping the granting of so-called “special rights” for gays (such as “driving” apparently), they lie.
More on Italy’s relatively dismal record on gay rights here.
Filed under: Foreign Affairs, Gay Rights and Issues, Law, Society, Religion, Culture Wars