On Tuesday evening, Cristiano Malgioglio, a songwriter and popular television personality also known for his bizarre couture chasing his love life, was the Italian presenter for the broadcast of the Eurovision Song Contest semifinal. Speaking of the five countries that automatically qualify for the final – Italy, France, Germany, Spain and Great Britain – he joked, “I have a friend in every country.” Last year he was also a presenter.
Eurovision has always had “a big LGBTQ element in its fandom,” said Catherine Baker, a historian at the University of Hull who has written about the contest. Following important rulings by the European Court of Human Rights in the late 1990s and the Amsterdam Treaty of 1997, which prohibited discrimination against people on the basis of sexual orientation, “Europe became associated with the idea of LGBTQ rights, and symbolically that an impact on Eurovision Song Contest, even if it is not organized by the European Union,’ said Baker.
The competition has also long been a pioneer when it comes to LGBTQ representation on stage, featuring artists such as Iceland’s Paul Oscar, Israel’s Dana International and Finnish Saara Aalto over the years.
LGBTQ people face openly hostile environments in several European countries, including Poland, Hungary and Russia. Moscow Patriarch Kirill, the powerful head of the Russian Orthodox Church, recently justified Russia’s invasion of Ukraine by claiming it was part of a struggle against ideals imposed by liberal foreigners, including gay pride parades.
Franco Grillini, a prominent Italian LGBTQ rights activist, said a song like “Brividi” would once have been “unimaginable” at a festival where normally Italians are glued to their television screens.
In the past, homosexuality could also harm a musical career in Italy, he said, citing the case of Umberto Bindi, a talented gay singer-songwriter who caused a scandal in 1961 in Sanremo by wearing a pinky ring (then a suspected sign of homosexuality). He never got the recognition he deserved because “he was brutally discriminated against,” Grillini said.