The LGTBIQ collective in Italy mobilizes against the offensive against homosexual families promoted by the government of the far-right Giorgia Meloni, who in recent days has rejected the European paternity certificate and demands that municipalities stop registering the children of couples of the same sex born abroad.
Both movements culminated in the presentation of up to three bills to declare surrogate motherhood carried out abroad a “universal crime”, the processing of which began this Thursday in the Chamber of Deputies.
It is a new obstacle for gay families in Italy, one of the few Western European states where same-sex marriage is not legal. “Surrogacy is the excuse, Italy has never regularized the paternity of same-sex couples, it did not do so in 2016 when the only LGTBIQ law was approved, which is that of civil unions,” activist Alessia told EFE. Crocini, president of the Famiglie Arcobaleno (Rainbow Families) association.
Thousands of people demonstrated last Saturday in Milan after the mayor of the city, the progressive Beppe Sala, confirmed that he was stopping the registration of children of same-sex couples born abroad at the request of the Ministry of the Interior, and today has called another mobilization in Genoa.
Milan took advantage of a legislative vacuum to carry out these registrations in the Civil Registry, together with a handful of Italian municipalities, such as Padua, whose councilor, Sergio Giordani, continues to do so despite everything: “We mayors are called to act with common sense to protect the dignity of girls and boys and their fundamental rights,” he said on Wednesday.
But the Supreme Court ruled in December that those born in another country by surrogacy will only be recognized as children in Italy through the adoption process and the law governing assisted procreation in Italy dates from 2004, only covering these procedures for heterosexual couples with fertility problems.
“There are Italian parents of children who have an American passport (a country that allows surrogacy for foreigners) and cannot transcribe their birth certificate,” says Crocini, for whom minors are excluded from the welfare state by not being able to go “to the pediatrician or public school.
The only way for these families is to initiate an adoption process in the courts and wait for a judge’s decision, which is complex in the case of homosexual families since civil unions do not enjoy the same facilities for adoption as married couples, indicates the activist.
In the case of a couple made up of two women, only the surrogate is recognized as the biological mother in the registry, while the other has no legal relationship with the child. “They want to make the lives of LGTBIQ people more complicated,” Crocini denounces. – Because it is true that before there was no law, but some mayors found a way to formalize the records.
One day after asking the municipalities to stop registrations, the Senate rejected the “European Certificate of Paternity” proposed by the European Commission so that all countries of the European Union (EU) recognize the paternity of a family from another Member State .
The ruling coalition, headed by Meloni’s formation, Brothers of Italy (FdI), justified that the proposal represented an invasion of national law and generated problems when recognizing children born through surrogacy in other countries.
In recent days, this practice of assisted reproduction has been the target of harsh messages delivered by conservative politicians such as Federico Mollicone, FdI deputy, who assured on television last Monday that “surrogacy is a more serious crime than pedophilia”. . The matter has already reached Parliament because the right-wing coalition wants to add to the 2004 law, which outlaws “surrogate wombs”, the phrase “the penalties established in this article will also apply if the acts are committed abroad “.
In Italy, where almost 40% of the population opposes equal marriage according to a survey carried out by Istat in 2021, the measures have the support of organizations such as Provita and Famiglia, which celebrated in a statement “the hard blows to the lobby Italian LGTBIQ”.
“As it is customary to attack minorities, such as immigrants or the LGTBIQ community, it is a good way to distract public opinion from other problems,” contrasted Crocini.
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