Voxeurop community Italy’s battle for gay unions

A relic from the past century

The vagaries of a country where the Vatican has much too much impact.

Published on 14 February 2016 at 18:31

There is a country in Old Europe where gay people cannot marry (nor have the equivalent of a French “Pacs” – a civil union) and neither gay people nor singles can adopt. This relic from the past century is Italy, my birthplace, several times condemned for discrimination against gay people by the European Court of Justice.

Italy is, of course, a very Catholic country, but I do not think this is enough, per se, to explain what is going on: we Italians are a special breed of Catholics, expert in eschewing Catholic dogmas. Most of our right-wing politicians, although they defend the traditional family, have divorced and remarried (divorce is legal since 1975, and even abortion is).
Italy, however, is on the verge of change.

If everything goes as planned, soon we should see the approval of the Cirinnà bill on gay civil unions – taking its name from Monica Cirinnà, the dauntless MP from PM Matteo Renzi’s Democratic party party who presented it. Correction: the law, hopefully, will be approved in the Senate, but then it will pass to the lower Chamber of Deputies where the government has enough votes to approve it with ease – but, if it were modified, it would go back to the Senate and so on. The road is long.

The battle in the higher Chamber, where the government’s numbers are fragile, has exemplified until now every possible horror of the Italian political life. First of all: we’ve been waiting for a law of this kind since the first project was presented thirty years ago. Secondly, this law is a watered down, tame compromise accurately studied to offend as little as possible: the Cirinnà law does not prescribe gay marriages, just “civil unions” that guarantee most of a marriage’s rights, but do not consent adoptions. But the real controversy in Parliament exploded around an article that would permit the so-called “stepchild adoption”.

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Clips of far-right senators knotting their tongues trying to say – in English – “stepchild adoption” during the Senate debate have made Facebook a merrier place for days. This part of the law states that any partner can ask to to adopt the biological child of his/her companion to protect the child’s right to remain in a safe environment. Objectors say it is a veiled authorization to march out of Italy and procure a child through a surrogacy mother (the practice is illegal in Italy). The real fun part, however, is that adopting a partner’s child is already inscribed in the adoption law since 1986, and recently, at least in one case, a judge assigned the same right to a lesbian couple. So this part of the new law just reiterates something which already exists.

Italians have been battling for weeks now with the intricacies of the Cirinnà bill, trying first to understand, then to decide what they think. We had a Sunday with supporters of the law demonstrating in dozens of Italian cities and proclaiming “We are one million people!”. The following Sunday, another demonstration from the Catholic side was held in Circo Massimo in Rome and the cry was “We are two million people!” – having of course to double, at least, the post (Realistic estimates suggest the first demonstration called to the streets about 100,000 people, the second perhaps 200,000).

We’ve had people yell in Parliament that surrogacy is akin to “a crime against humanity” (although surrogacy is never mentioned in the law), and, also in Parliament, a senator asking a gay collegue “how much did you pay for your child?”. Another senator accused the Speaker of the Senate, Piero Grasso, of being a “stupid servant of the power”. The Speaker answered suavely “Your insults are a medal of honour, Senator Giovanardi”...

I can afford to consider the matter with a modicum of humour, because I am convinced that the law will pass. However, I have yet to find a reliable poll on Italians’ real opinion. Right-wing politicians declare the country is with them. Supporters of the law assure that Italians agree with the Cirinnà bill – or, at least, they don’t care. I tend to agree with them. Italians, I believe, in the majority couldn’t care less one way or another. Somebody does care, though: the Vatican cares.

The Catholic establishment battled gay marriages in France and Spain as best as it could, and letting go of Italy is the ultimate abomination. Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco, the president of CEI (the Bishops’ Conference), invoked a secret vote in the Senate (hoping that it would make it easier for the senators from the majority to vote against the law). Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, rather curtly, suggested it is for the Senate to decide. But it has to be remarked that he gave his senators the moral freedom of voting as they like on the notorious stepchild adoption.

Meanwhile, as a single woman who does not have children and is starting to wonder to whom she will leave her cookery books, I can’t help but wonder if modernizing Italy will mean one day also enabling single people to adopt – not to mention rainbow families. There are about 25,000 children under the care of the State in Italy. About 40 percent manages to return to their families. But many are simply too old or too problematic to be adoption material. A fraction of them goes into foster care; singles can foster, but few have the strength to start fostering a child that they could never adopt. The rest grow up to 18 in an institution. They deserve better; we all do.

Photo: The pro-gay marriage demonstration in Piazza del Pantheon in Rome on 22 January 2016, by Alessandra Quattrocchi

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