Italian general fired after comparing gay adoption to cannibalism

An Italian general has lost his military titles after calling gay people “not normal” and comparing gay adoption to cannibalism in his new book.

“Dear homosexuals, you’re not normal, get over it,” wrote Roberto Vanacci in The World Upside Down. “Normality is heterosexuality. If everything seems normal to you, however, it is the fault of the plots of the international gay lobby which banned terms that until a few years ago were in our dictionaries.”

Related Stories Trans men enter Miss Italy to protest pageant’s ban on trans women

The protest comes after the pageant’s patron said that only “women from birth” would be allowed to compete.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg of the insults Vannacci hurled at various groups. According to Pink News, he referred to Black Italians, Jews, feminists, and environmentalists as “the problems afflicting Italian society.”

Get the Daily Brief The news you care about, reported on by the people who care about you.

“It’s disturbing that an army general, and so a person at the highest level of the army, can express a thought that’s so openly homophobic, racist, and misogynistic,” Gabriele Piazzoni, Secretary General of the Italian LGBTQ+ organization Arcigay, told Euronews. “The armed forces must be inspired by the values of the Constitution. This a democratic country, not a military dictatorship, and these statements cannot be tolerated.”

Last week, Italian Defense Minister Guido Crosetto ordered disciplinary action against Vannacci, who was the head of the Military Geographical Institute and the army’s paratroopers unit. According to The Straits Times, Crosetto called the comments in Vannacci’s self-published book “ramblings… that discredit the army, the Defense Ministry, and the Constitution.”

LGBTQ+ lawmaker and activist Alessandro Zan said, “[It is] serious and alarming that an army general in office publishes a political essay… steeped in anti-democratic, racist, homophobic and misogynist language.”

On Monday, Vanacci claimed he had not been informed of any disciplinary actions taken against him.

“I do not know the disciplinary measure because I have not received any notification,” he told a local news station. “I have not been removed, nor dismissed, but I have been replaced and it happened last night. Now there is another person in command of the Military Geographical Institute.”

Vanacci also defended the statements he made in the book.

“I challenge anyone to come up with a word that has offended someone, I have not offended anyone. I was not discriminatory,” he said. “The sentence about gays has been misrepresented.”

Yet, according to Euronews, even after losing his titles, he again referred to gay people as “statistically abnormal.”

The fact that Vanacci has experienced consequences at all has given a shred of hope to LGBTQ+ Italians who have been subject to Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s viciously anti-LGBTQ+ government. In March, the country’s right-wing government announced that state agencies should no longer register the children of same-sex couples. In July, he country began stripping lesbian mothers of their parental rights.

“In Italy, there’s a lot to do, really, really a lot,” said trans police officer Alessio Avellino. “But we’re doing it.”