Italy protests restrictions on same-sex parent rights

MILAN: Hundreds of people took to the streets of Milan on Saturday (March 18) to protest Italy’s new right-wing government move to limit the rights of same-sex parents.

“You explain to my son that I am not his mother,” says one billboard in a sea of ​​rainbow flags that fill one of the central squares of the northern city I read

Italy legalized same-sex civil unions in 2016, but stopped short of giving same-sex couples adoption rights due to opposition from the Catholic Church.

Although some local governments decided to act unilaterally, the decision was instead made on a case-by-case basis by the courts as the parents would take legal action.

Milan had registered children of same-sex couples conceived abroad through surrogacy, which is illegal in Italy, and through assisted reproduction, which is only available to heterosexual couples.

But centre-left Mayor Beppe Sala said this week that this had stopped after the interior ministry sent a letter arguing that a court would have to decide.

“It’s a clear setback from a political and social point of view and I put myself in the shoes of my parents who thought I could see this potential at Milan,” he said on the podcast, fighting change. I swore that

Fabrizio Marazzo of the Gay Party said about 20 children were waiting to be registered in Milan and denounced the change as “unfair and discriminatory”.

A mother or father who is not legally recognized as a child’s parent may face major bureaucratic problems, with the risk of losing the child if the registered parent dies or the marital relationship breaks down. I have.

The newly elected leader of the center-left Democratic Party, Ellie Shrine, was one of the opposition politicians who took part in Saturday’s protests, where many campaigners opposed the new government.

Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, whose far-right Brothers of Italy party won the elections in September, strongly emphasizes traditional family values.

“Yes to the natural family, no to the LGBT lobby!” she said in a speech last year before being elected leader of a right-wing coalition that included Matteo Salvini’s Anti-Immigrant Alliance.

Earlier this week, a Senate committee voted against an EU plan that would require member states to recognize same-sex parental rights granted elsewhere in the bloc.