Over the rainbow city

The last decade has brought astonishing changes into the arena of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights, culture, and everyday life, but while the European Union is seriously concerned about LGBT issues, in Italy the homosexuals still represent a vulnerable group and continue to be victims of persecution, discrimination, bullying and gross ill-treatment. From this point of view the Italian state is still fugitive.This book presents a multidisciplinary analysis of the LGBT situation in Italy. Sociologists, jurists, statisticians and psychologists aim their point of view on the homosexual issue. The contemporary claims of Italian homosexual citizens include an insistence on equal treatment in employment, housing, education, marriage and the right to participate fully in the political process. But of course, feeling fully included in the society in which they live entails more than the formal acquisition of legal equality. According to such a perspective, the objective of the volume is on the one hand to theorize the relevance of the so-called "rainbow cities" as to LGBT policies and movements, and on the other hand to present the "Italian Rainbow City Index" which is an inclusiveness index that identifies policies, interventions and other urban levers which have proven effective at ameliorating marginality and promoting LGBT equity and citizenship.