In the 1990s Consoli was on the front lines almost daily. He was the first person to request a meeting with the Roman police regarding crimes against gays. (The Police Commissioner later said that it was due to his work that these crimes were drastically reduced.) He also met with the mayor of Rome to request--and obtain--the appointment of a liaison officer to the gay and lesbian community.

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On July 29, 1992, he organized with Kevin Calegari a demonstration at the Vatican to protest the anti-gay letter of Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI) to the U. S. bishops entitled "Some Considerations Concerning the Catholic Response to Legislative Proposals on the Non-Discrimination of Homosexual Persons." This document described homosexuality as an "objective disorder" and a "tendency ordered towards an intrinsic moral evil." It advocated legal discrimination against homosexuals in areas of adoption rights, the hiring of teachers and coaches, and in the military.

Consoli's editorial and literary activity is notable for its range and visibility. He was interviewed frequently on radio and television, almost always in his role as founder of the Italian gay movement.

He authored some thirty books and thousands of articles for newspapers and journals. His plays wereproduced successfully and he was also known as a poet, but most of his writings dealt with historical topics.

Perhaps his most important books are Homocaust (1984, reprint 1991), which describes the Nazi persecution of homosexuals, and Ecce Homo (1998; translated into Greek, 2001), which treats homosexuality in the Bible. His own personal favorite of his works was Andata & Ritorno (2003), an autobiographical novel in which the protagonist's serious illness prompts a review of earlier periods of his life. The more conventional autobiography, Affetti Speciali (1999), traces not only his own life, but also the birth and progress of the Italian gay movement.

Consoli always enjoyed tracing the history of other gay pioneers, especially the German homosexual theorist/emancipationist Karl Heinrich Ulrichs (1825-1895), who spent the last fifteen years of his life in Italy. After rediscovering the tomb of Ulrichs in L'Aquila (about 50 miles northeast of Rome) in 1988, he began annual pilgrimages there on August 28, Ulrichs's birthday. At first he made these journeys alone, then he was accompanied by more and more friends, so that by 1995 newspapers began to report on these commemorations. They became international events.

Consoli's anarchist and anticlerical positions were solidly reasoned; but despite his rejection of all organized religion, he was nevertheless profoundly spiritual, discerning the divine in nature.

While there was, of course, an evolution in his thinking, his anarchist/libertarian principles remained steady. He experienced the persecution of state and church, but, despite serious health problems in his last years, he continued to write, and to use the Internet to inform a wide circle.

Consoli also knew the joy of being able to adopt a young man, who later married and in 2004 presented him with a grandson named Massimo.

After a long battle with cancer, Consoli died on November 4, 2007. His body was interred near that of his friend Dario Bellezza.

As part of its agenda to preserve an "Aryan master race," Nazism persecuted homosexuals as "asocial parasites"; more than 100,000 men were arrested on homosexual charges during the Nazi years, with 5,000-15,000 gay men incarcerated in concentration camps.

Historically, the Roman Catholic Church may be the institution most responsible for the suffering of individuals involved in same-sex sexual relationships.

André Baudry, as leader of the French homophile movement from the early 1950s into the 1980s, was the principal spokesman for homosexuals in France before the rise of gay liberation in the 1970s.

Swiss actor, cabaret performer, and stage director Karl Meier was, under the pseudonym "Rolf," editor of Der Kreis, the leading European homophile publication, from 1943 until its demise in 1967.

A leader of the Italian gay liberation movement in the 1970s, Mario Mieli combined a radical theoretical perspective with a courageous (and often provocative) public persona.

One of the most important cultural figures to emerge from post-World War II Italy, Pier Paolo Pasolini was a versatile man-of-letters, but he was foremost a filmmaker.

The confrontations between police and demonstrators at the Stonewall Inn in New York City the weekend of June 27-29, 1969 mark the beginning of the modern glbtq movement for equal rights.

Nineteenth-Century German activist Karl Heinrich Ulrichs was both the first modern theorist of homosexuality and the first homosexual to "come out" publicly.