The head of Italy’s opposition party criticized the bureaucratic crackdown on LGBTQ families as “ideological”, “cruel” and “discriminatory”.
The Interior Ministry forced Milan this week to limit parental rights to the biological parents of children registered by same-sex couples in the city.
Democratic Party leader Elly Schlein, who revealed in 2020 that she was in a relationship with another woman, vowed on Saturday to push through legislation to better recognize and protect her rights.
He joined thousands of people at a demonstration in Milan to protest a move by the far-right Italian government to restrict parental rights in same-sex relationships.
“You explain to my son that I am not his mother,” read a banner held amid a sea of rainbow flags that filled one of the northern city’s central squares.
Democratic Party leader Elly Schlein, who revealed in 2020 that she was in a relationship with another woman, vowed on Saturday to push through legislation to better recognize and protect her rights.
LGBTQ protesters hold a demonstration against the government’s crackdown on same-sex parents in Milan’s Piazza Scala.
Italy legalized same-sex civil unions in 2016, but opposition from the Catholic Church meant it stopped short of granting gay couples the right to adopt.
Instead, the courts have made decisions on a case-by-case basis, as parents take legal action, although some local authorities decided to act unilaterally.
Milan had been registering children of same-sex couples conceived abroad through surrogacy – which is illegal in Italy – or medically assisted reproduction, which is only available to heterosexual couples.
But its centre-left mayor, Beppe Sala, revealed this week that this had stopped after the Interior Ministry sent a letter insisting that the courts must decide.
“It is an obvious step backwards from a political and social point of view, and I put myself in the shoes of those parents who thought they could count on this possibility in Milan,” he said on a podcast, vowing to fight for change.
Fabrizio Marrazzo of the Gay Party said some 20 children are waiting to be registered in Milan, condemning the change as “unfair and discriminatory”.
A mother or father who is not legally recognized as the father of their child may face major bureaucratic problems, with the risk of losing the child if the registered father dies or the relationship breaks down.
Party leader Schlein has never made her sexual orientation a prominent part of her politics, and she did not address Saturday’s protest from the main stage.
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, whose far-right Brothers of Italy party came out on top in September elections, places a strong emphasis on traditional family values.
Speaking to reporters after the protest ended, he accused Prime Minister Giorgia Meroni’s government of “cruelly attacking” children of gay parents and denying them rights.
‘We are talking about trampled rights when they are already recognized by our constitution. We are talking about girls and boys who are already growing up in our communities, going to our schools,” Schlein said in comments carried by the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera. ‘This is no longer tolerable. These families are tired of being discriminated against.’
Meloni, whose far-right Brothers of Italy party won elections in September, places a strong emphasis on traditional family values.
‘Yes to natural families, no to the LGBT lobby!’ he said in a speech last year before his election to head a right-wing coalition that includes Matteo Salvini’s Anti-Immigration League.
The prefectural decree also says that parental rights should be limited to the biological father, even for children of same-sex couples who registered for the first time in other European Union member countries.
LGBTQ rights groups say the underlying decision by an Italian Senate committee to block recognition of the EU documents puts Italy in line with countries such as Poland and Hungary, strong allies of the Meloni government.
“This retrograde majority has inexplicably targeted children ideologically,” Schlein said.
“This goes against a European regulation that establishes a trivial thing and that is that if you are a recognized daughter or son in another European country, you must also be recognized in Italy.”
The government has not ruled on the Milan directive. Meloni, who has a daughter with her partner, has frequently promoted his Christian faith and her family values.
Schlein said he would push to open debate on legislation to close the legal loophole that resulted in the crackdown.
The protest on Saturday was also attended by Francesca Pascale, a longtime former partner of former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.
Pascale, who is now in a same-sex union with another woman, criticized Berlusconi’s ruling allies as “homophobic”.
“The sovereignists of this country treat us worse than criminals,” he said. ‘Civil rights are rights for all.’
