Italy: Demonstration against the ban on the rights of gay parents

Several hundred people demonstrated in Milan on Saturday against an initiative by Giorgia Meloni’s ultra-conservative government aimed at restricting the rights of gay parents.

“You’re telling my son I’m not his mother,” denounced a sign held amid rainbow flags in a square in the city centre.

The city of Milan has registered the civil status of same-sex couples born through the use of surrogacy (GPA) abroad or through medically assisted reproduction, prohibited in Italy.

But the centre-left mayor of Milan Beppe Sala revealed this week that he had stopped doing so after the interior ministry told him in a letter that it was for the courts to decide.

Same-sex unions were legalized in Italy in 2016, but adoption rights were left in place. Decisions concerning children are made by the courts on a case-by-case basis, but sometimes local authorities, as in Milan, have taken the initiative to act unilaterally.

“It is a clear step backwards from a political and social point of view, and I put myself in the shoes of parents who thought they could count on this prospect in Milan,” Beppe Sala said in a podcast. Are.” defeat.

Fabrizio Marazzo of the Gay Party claimed that around 20 children were waiting to be registered with the Civil Registry in Milan and condemned the end of this possibility as “unfair and discriminatory”.

Elie Schlein, the recently elected leader of the centre-left Democratic Party, was among opposition figures present at Saturday’s demonstration.

Since coming to power in 2022, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has placed great emphasis on traditional family values. “Yes to natural families, no to the LGBT lobby!”, she declared before her election to head the right-wing coalition.