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POLITICS

Italy’s new conservative Families Minister had his site hacked with ads for sex drugs

Lorenzo Fontana, Italy's new Minister for Families and Disabilities who has made negative statements about gay families and reproductive rights, was targeted by hackers who inserted adverts for erectile dysfunction remedies into the search results for his website.

Published: 4 June 2018 18:31 CEST
Italy's new conservative Families Minister had his site hacked with ads for sex drugs
Italy's Minister for Families and Disabilities, Lorenzo Fontana of the League. Photo: Alberto Pizzoli/AFP

The attack, known as a pharma hack, placed ads for an anti-impotence drug in the description of Fontana's official website when it appeared in Google search results. 

The problem appeared to have been fixed by Monday afternoon. The minister's homepage itself was not affected.

An ally of Interior Minister Matteo Salvini and like him one of the right-wing populist League party's appointments to Italy's new cabinet, Fontana was already causing controversy after less than 24 hours in office.

A conservative Catholic, the newly appointed minister told an interviewer that same-sex parents “don't exist at the moment, as far as the law is concerned” and said he believed in “natural” families with one mother and one father. He also said that he would try to reduce the number of abortions carried out in Italy, including by giving doctors greater liberty to try and dissuade women from seeking them. 

READ ALSO: The long road to legal abortion in Italy – and why many women are still denied it


A Sicilian woman marches with a banner saying 'Free to choose'. Photo: Francesco Villa/AFP

Before becoming minister Fontana participated in anti-abortion rallies, including one at which he told the crowd that gay marriage, changing attitudes to gender and mass immigration were helping to “wipe out our community and our traditions”. He has expressed admiration for President Vladimir Putin's Russia, where the state outlaws the public defence of homosexuality and where hate crimes are rife, and said that European women should have more children.

While Salvini said that his ally's views were not reflected in the new government's programme, Fontana's comments drew a fierce response from rights activists, who responded with the hashtag “noi esistiamo” (“we exist”) on social media. Pop star Tiziano Ferro, who came out as gay eight years ago, wrote on Instagram that: “I don't want support, it would be enough for me to no longer feel invisible.”

Italy was one of the last Western nations to recognize civil unions between gay partners and offers them fewer legal rights than many of its European neighbours, including Catholic Portugal and Spain.

While Italy does not guarantee same-sex couples the right to jointly adopt children or stepchildren, in a landmark move this year, the city of Turin allowed children conceived by artificial insemination or surrogacy to be legally registered to both same-sex parents. Some local authorities have also recognized joint adoptions carried out abroad.

Meanwhile abortion has been legal in Italy for the past 40 years, but many women are still unable to access the procedure due to a clause that allows doctors to refuse to carry it out on the grounds of conscientious objection. According to health ministry figures, just over 70 percent of gynaecologists in Italy refuse to perform abortions, a rate that has risen over the past ten years.

READ ALSO: 


Photo: Filippo Monteforte/AFP

POLITICS

Italy’s Meloni criticises her own government’s ‘Big Brother tax’ law

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni on Wednesday criticised an "invasive" tax evasion measure reintroduced by her own government, sparking accusations of incompetence from opposition lawmakers.

Published: 22 May 2024 17:12 CEST
Italy's Meloni criticises her own government's 'Big Brother tax' law

The measure, allowing Italy’s tax authorities to check bank accounts to look for discrepancies between someone’s declared income and their spending, was abolished in 2018 but its return was announced in the government’s official journal of business this week.

Meloni had previously been strongly critical of the ‘redditometro’ measure, and took to social media on Wednesday to defend herself from accusations of hypocrisy.

“Never will any ‘Big Brother tax’ be introduced by this government,” she wrote on Facebook.

Meloni said she had asked deputy economy minister Maurizio Leo – a member of her own far-right Brothers of Italy party, who introduced the measure – to bring it to the next cabinet meeting.

“And if changes are necessary, I will be the first to ask,” she wrote.

Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani, who heads the right-wing Forza Italia party, also railed against what he called an “obsolete tool”.

He called for it to be revoked, saying it did not fight tax evasion but “oppresses, invades people’s lives”.

Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini, who leads the far-right League party, said it was “one of the horrors of the past” and deserved to stay there.

Opposition parties revelled in the turmoil within the governing coalition, where tensions are already high ahead of European Parliament elections in which all three parties are competing with each other.

“They are not bad, they are just incapable,” said former premier Matteo Renzi, now leader of a small centrist party.

Another former premier, Five Star Movement leader Giuseppe Conte, asked of Meloni: “Was she asleep?”

The measure allows tax authorities to take into account when assessing someone’s real income elements including jewellery, life insurance, horse ownership, gas and electricity bills, pets and hairdressing expenses.

According to the government, tax evasion and fraud cost the Italian state around 95 to 100 billion euros each year.

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