A gay man who shrugged off three mafia plots to kill him is poised to become Sicily’s first homosexual governor in elections that show the center left advancing at the expense of former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi’s right-wing party.
Representing a coalition of Italy’s center-left Democratic Party and the Catholic UDC party, Rosario Crocetta is leading against the Berlusconi candidate and a contender representing the maverick movement of comedian Beppe Grillo, who trailed in third place.
Crocetta, a devoted Catholic, has long claimed that southern Italy is surprisingly relaxed about gay politicians, once stating: “There is a great respect for the individual, making it less homophobic than the north.”
Photo: Reuters
In August he told an interviewer: “After leaving prison in England, Oscar Wilde took refuge in Palermo. Seen like this, there is lot people have to learn about the south.”
As mayor of Gela, Crocetta persuaded local businesses not to pay protection money to the mafia and claimed that coming out gave him a sense of liberation that allowed him to understand how suffocated Sicily had become under the mafia’s yoke.
One mob boss, who hired a Lithuanian assassin for a failed bid to kill Crocetta, was less than tolerant of his sexuality than voters, describing him in a wiretapped call as “this queer communist.”
“The clans may ridicule Crocetta’s sexuality, but it’s the backing he gave businesses that refuse to pay the pizzo [protection payment] that really drove them mad,” a local magistrate said.
Indonesia yesterday began enforcing its newly ratified penal code, replacing a Dutch-era criminal law that had governed the country for more than 80 years and marking a major shift in its legal landscape. Since proclaiming independence in 1945, the Southeast Asian country had continued to operate under a colonial framework widely criticized as outdated and misaligned with Indonesia’s social values. Efforts to revise the code stalled for decades as lawmakers debated how to balance human rights, religious norms and local traditions in the world’s most populous Muslim-majority nation. The 345-page Indonesian Penal Code, known as the KUHP, was passed in 2022. It
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