NewsEuropeLGBT community fears for the rights of gay parents in Italy

LGBT community fears for the rights of gay parents in Italy

The LGTBQ+ community in Italy accuses the Giorgia Meloni government of trampling on the parental rights of same-sex couples. According to the collective, the country is already one of the least advanced in Europe.

For activists, the latest example of this occurred this week, when the Senate voted against a European Commission regulation for cross-border recognition of same-sex parents. Italy thus joined the Visegrad group – made up of the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia – by refusing to transpose the regulation.

The news has outraged the country’s LGTBQ+ community, which has repeatedly denounced the Meloni government for discrimination, pointing to a propaganda strategy against gay people and the tightening of rules against homosexual parenthood.

Brothers of Italy, the ruling party with neo-fascist roots, led the vote against the European legislation, arguing that recognizing same-sex parents could undermine the current ban on surrogacy.

Italian legislation currently considers that surrogacy violates the dignity of women.

“Mother and father”

“The veto is false,” Vincenzo Miri, president of Rete Lenford, an association that offers legal aid to queer people, told Euronews. “The European proposal would not change the current ban or force the recognition of same-sex Italian parents who have resorted to surrogacy abroad.”

The European proposal would only affect parents already recognized in their country of origin, but even that is not mandatory.

“There are a number of European same-sex couples who resort to surrogacy, and recognizing them would mean breaking the ban,” Marco Scurria, secretary of the Italian Senate’s Commission for European Policies, argues to Euronews, citing hearings with legal experts on the matter. .

“Unrecognized same-sex parents will have no problem in Italy,” adds Scurria, “but we can’t open a door to something illegal here. Parents will be recognized, but this shouldn’t be automatic, or else people can do whatever you want.”

Meanwhile, a bill backed by the Brothers of Italy in Parliament seeks to make it a crime for Italian couples to resort to surrogacy in countries where the practice is legal, a proposal that could interfere with international law.

Gay rights groups view the government’s concern over same-sex surrogacy as an old right-wing obsession, though in reality it’s mostly heterosexual couples who turn to surrogacy.

But surrogacy is not the only issue that worries the Government.

“Even when the left approved the recognition of same-sex unions in 2016, the issue of same-sex parenthood was pushed aside,” says Alessia Crocini, president of Famiglie Arcobaleno, an association that helps same-sex families. .

In Italy, adopting the child of a same-sex couple is extremely difficult and, although recognition of same-sex paternity is possible, it usually involves a long legal process that is usually applied above all to couples of women who have resorted to assisted pregnancies and stepchild adoption.

Rete Lenford and Famiglie Arcobaleno represent hundreds of these cases in court.

One of these legal battles was over a 2019 right-wing decree by then-Interior Minister Matteo Salvini, which made it mandatory to specify who the “mother and father” were on children’s identity documents, instead of “parents.” .

They want us to stop having children

Activists and the LGTBQ+ community see the veto of the EU proposal in general as part of a broader crackdown on same-sex parental rights, a workhorse for the Meloni government.

On Monday, a day before the veto on the European proposal, the Ministry of the Interior forced the mayor of Milan, Giuseppe Sala, to stop recognizing same-sex parents in the city, citing a rule that prevents same-sex couples from sex to access assisted reproduction.

“It is an ideological battle for this government,” says Mario Colamarino, president of the Mario Mieli association for the rights of homosexuals.

This month, Meloni reiterated in an interview her conviction that “a child only deserves the best: a mother and a father.”

The Minister for Family and Equal Opportunities, Eugenia Roccella, has frequently repeated this idea on television, where the rights of same-sex parents are often discussed without allowing the participation of LGBTQ+ couples or activists.

“The judges said that we should take into account the interest of the children, which is to have a family, but Italy is not doing it. Our children will continue to have two fathers or two mothers, whatever a religious or right-wing person says” Crocini commented.

A 2021 Constitutional Court ruling called on Parliament to open up the regulatory framework for adoptions in special circumstances to same-sex parents.

“The practice of adoption is a problem for both heterosexual and same-sex couples, and Hermanos de Italia believes it is important to help children find a family,” Scurria promised.

But a bill to make it easier for same-sex parent adoptions does not appear to be a priority for the Meloni government, and standard adoptions remain prohibited for same-sex couples.

“They want us to stop having children,” Crocini argues, “but we will continue to have them, and they will grow up in a country that discriminates against them.”

Euronews contacted the Ministry of Family and Equal Opportunities and Brothers of Italy Senator and Chairman of the party faction Lucio Malan for further comment but has not received a response.

Source: Euronews Español

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