Protests as Italy restricts rights of same-sex parents

MILAN — Hundreds of people took to the streets of Milan on Saturday to protest moves by Italy’s new right-wing government to limit the rights of same-sex parents.

“You tell my son I’m not his mother,” read a sign held up amid a sea of ​​rainbow flags that filled one of the northern city’s central plazas.

Italy legalized same-sex civil partnerships in 2016, but the Resistance of the Catholic Church resulted in gay couples not being given the right to adopt.

Decisions were instead made on a case-by-case basis by the courts as parents took legal action, although some local authorities chose to act unilaterally.

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

But its centre-left mayor, Beppe Sala, announced this week that this had stopped after the Home Office sent a letter insisting the courts must decide.

“From a political and social point of view, it’s an obvious step backwards and I put myself in the shoes of the parents who thought they could count on this opportunity in Milan,” he said in a podcast, vowing to fight the change.

The Gay Party’s Fabrizio Marrazzo said about 20 children are waiting to be registered in Milan and condemned the change as “unfair and discriminatory”.

A mother or father who is not legally recognized as the parent of their child can face enormous bureaucratic problems with the risk of losing the child if the registered parent dies or the couple’s relationship breaks up.

Elly Schlein, newly elected leader of the centre-left Democratic Party, was among opposition politicians attending Saturday’s protest, which saw many activists rail against the new government.

Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, whose far-right party, Brothers of Italy, won first place in September’s elections, places great emphasis on traditional family values.

“Yes to natural families, no to the LGBT lobby!” she said in a speech last year ahead of her election at the head of a right-wing coalition that includes Matteo Salvini’s anti-immigration league.

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