Enzo Francone

Vincenzo Francone, known as Enzo, grew up in Turin in a family of carpenters and learned the trade in the family workshop. He studied economics and took part in the student movement of 1968. In 1971 he joined FUORI!, one of Italy’s first gay organisations, founded by the Turin bookseller Angelo Pezzana. In April 1972 he was one of the activists who protested in Sanremo against a congress on “curing” homosexuality – the first public appearance of Italy’s gay movement.

From 1974 to 1977 he lived in London, where he shared a flat with the activist and writer Mario Mieli. Back in Turin, he became regional secretary of the Radical Party and in 1978 took part in founding the International Gay Association, today’s ILGA.

He became known for two spectacular protests. In March 1979, shortly after the Iranian revolution, he was arrested in Tehran for demonstrating outside a prison where homosexual men had been executed. On 21 July 1980, during the Olympic Games in Moscow, he chained himself up on Red Square to protest against Article 121 of the Soviet penal code, which punished sex between men with up to five years in a labour camp. Soviet security officers overpowered him in front of Western journalists, and he was expelled.

For years Francone ran a bar and disco in central Turin and helped organise the city’s first gay film festival. Later he worked in care for the elderly and from 2006 was a key figure in Torino Pride. He died in Turin in 2009, aged 62.