Far right puts brakes on a new law that aims to stamp out homophobia in Italy

Attacks on gay people continue unchecked as activists step up their 25-year battle to win LGBT rights

Daniela Lourdes Falanga has had her fair share of battles. The first was to survive a brutal upbringing as the firstborn son of a mafia boss in Naples. Falanga, 43, had been expected to follow in the footsteps of her father, currently serving a life sentence, into the powerful Camorra organised crime syndicate. Instead, she found the courage to break ranks, and in 2019 was elected the first trans woman president of a branch of Arcigay, Italy's largest LGBT activist group.

I was not the boy who could adapt to that family, and it brought me so much suffering," Falanga, who leads Arcigay in Naples, told the Observer. And so, aged 17, I rebelled. When I transitioned, I did so for freedom and happiness. This is where my activism for trans people was born - I wanted people to understand that we are the same as everyone else and not monsters."