Read news from:
Austria
SHARE
COPY LINK

EQUALITY

Italian court rules in favour of same-sex parents on birth certificates

Judges in Italy on Tuesday ruled that children can have two mothers listed on their birth certificates – a decision hailed as a victory by rights campaigners in Catholic-majority Italy.

Published: 5 March 2024 15:20 CET
Italy, gay rights
Signs held by supporters of same-sex civil unions during a demonstration in Rome's Piazza delle Cinque Lune in January 2016. Photo by FILIPPO MONTEFORTE / AFP

The court in Padua rebutted an order by the public prosecutor’s office for city authorities to retroactively remove non-biological mothers from the birth certificates of 37 children dating back to 2017.

“It’s wonderful news,” lawyer Michele Giarratano, who represented 15 of the children, told AFP.

Had they been removed, the non-biological mothers risked losing access to their children if the other parent died or the couple separated.

Giarratano said, however, that the prosecutors or the interior ministry could appeal against Tuesday’s ruling.

In a similar case, a Milan court ruled in June of last year that a child’s birth certificate could have two mothers listed on it – but that decision was overturned on appeal last month.

Civil unions became legal in Italy in 2016 but the law on parental rights for same-sex couples is unclear.

Italy’s highest court has so far unsuccessfully urged successive parliaments to clarify the parental rights of gay couples.

Encouraged by several court rulings, local mayors have in recent years been registering both biological and non-biological parents on birth certificates.

But in January 2023 PM Giorgia Meloni’s hardline interior minister ordered town halls to stop transcribing certificates of children born
abroad through surrogacy – which is illegal in Italy – citing a recent court ruling.

READ ALSO: EU parliament slams Italy’s clampdown on same-sex couples’ rights

In response, prosecutors across the country began contesting birth certificates of children born to same-sex parents, whether through surrogacy or not.

“Beyond the favourable outcome […] there remains the fact of a political party waging an ignoble war against children,” said Gabriele Piazzoni, secretary general of Italy’s largest LGBTQ+ rights group Arcigay.

Meloni, a self-declared “Christian mother”, is a staunch supporter of the “traditional family” and has on multiple occasions spoken out against the “LGBT lobby”.

Piazzoni said that in ordering the removal of non-biological mothers from their children’s birth certificates, the prosecutors’ office in Padua had been “driven by an entirely ideological fury”.

Member comments

Log in here to leave a comment.
Become a Member to leave a comment.

EUROPEAN UNION

Italian PM Meloni to stand in EU Parliament elections

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said on Sunday she would stand in upcoming European Parliament elections, a move apparently calculated to boost her far-right party, although she would be forced to resign immediately.

Published: 28 April 2024 15:54 CEST
Italian PM Meloni to stand in EU Parliament elections

Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party, which has neo-Fascist roots, came top in Italy’s 2022 general election with 26 percent of the vote.

It is polling at similar levels ahead of the European elections on from June 6-9.

With Meloni heading the list of candidates, Brothers of Italy could exploit its national popularity at the EU level, even though EU rules require that any winner already holding a ministerial position must immediately resign from the EU assembly.

“We want to do in Europe exactly what we did in Italy on September 25, 2022 — creating a majority that brings together the forces of the right to finally send the left into opposition, even in Europe!” Meloni told a party event in the Adriatic city of Pescara.

In a fiery, sweeping speech touching briefly on issues from surrogacy and Ramadan to artificial meat, Meloni extolled her coalition government’s one-and-a-half years in power and what she said were its efforts to combat illegal immigration, protect families and defend Christian values.

After speaking for over an hour in the combative tone reminiscent of her election campaigns, Meloni said she had decided to run for a seat in the European Parliament.

READ ALSO: How much control does Giorgia Meloni’s government have over Italian media?

“I’m doing it because I want to ask Italians if they are satisfied with the work we are doing in Italy and that we’re doing in Europe,” she said, suggesting that only she could unite Europe’s conservatives.

“I’m doing it because in addition to being president of Brothers of Italy I’m also the leader of the European conservatives who want to have a decisive role in changing the course of European politics,” she added.

In her rise to power, Meloni, as head of Brothers of Italy, often railed against the European Union, “LGBT lobbies” and what she has called the politically correct rhetoric of the left, appealing to many voters with her straight talk.

“I am Giorgia, I am a woman, I am a mother, I am Italian, I am a Christian” she famously declared at a 2019 rally.

She used a similar tone Sunday, instructing voters to simply write “Giorgia” on their ballots.

“I have always been, I am, and will always be proud of being an ordinary person,” she shouted.

EU rules require that “newly elected MEP credentials undergo verification to ascertain that they do not hold an office that is incompatible with being a Member of the European Parliament,” including being a government minister.

READ ALSO: Why is Italy’s government being accused of helping tax dodgers?

The strategy has been used before, most recently in Italy in 2019 by Meloni’s deputy prime minister, Matteo Salvini, who leads the far-right Lega party.

The EU Parliament elections do not provide for alliances within Italy’s parties, meaning that Brothers of Italy will be in direct competition with its coalition partners Lega and Forza Italia, founded by Silvio Berlusconi.

The Lega and Forza Italia are polling at about seven percent and eight percent, respectively.

SHOW COMMENTS