Several hundred people demonstrated in Milan on Saturday to protest against initiatives by the ultra-conservative government of Giorgia Meloni aimed at restricting the rights of homosexual parents.
“You are telling my son that I am not his mother,” denounced a sign held up amid rainbow flags in one of the squares in the center of the city.
The city of Milan has registered in the civil status children of same-sex couples born either through recourse abroad to surrogacy (GPA) prohibited in Italy, or through medically assisted procreation.
But the centre-left mayor of Milan Beppe Sala revealed this week that he had stopped doing so after the Interior Ministry told him in a letter that it was up to the courts to decide.
Unions of same-sex couples were legalized in Italy in 2016, but leaving aside the right to adoption. Decisions concerning children are taken on a case-by-case basis by the courts, but sometimes local authorities have taken the initiative, as in Milan, to act unilaterally.
“It’s a clear step backwards from a political and social point of view, and I put myself in the shoes of those parents who thought they could count on this possibility in Milan,” Beppe Sala said in a podcast, assuring that he did not admit defeat.
Fabrizio Marrazzo of the Gay Party claimed that around 20 children were waiting to be registered with the civil registry in Milan and condemned the end of this possibility as “unfair and discriminatory”.
Elly Schlein, recently elected leader of the center-left Democratic Party, was among the opposition figures present at the demonstration on Saturday.
Since coming to power in 2022, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has placed a strong emphasis on traditional family values. “Yes to natural families, no to the LGBT lobby!”, she declared before her election to head a right-wing coalition.
03/18/2023 17:45:08 – Milan (AFP) – © 2023 AFP
