The streets of Milan saw protests on Saturday to protest Italy’s new right-wing government’s move to restrict the rights of same-sex parents.
Organized by LGBTQ groups across the country, the demonstration, Hands Off Our Sons and Daughters, took place in the historic Piazza della Scala square.
Same-sex parents who wish to register their children born by surrogacy abroad have often had to just put one parental name on official birth registrations or take their cases to family court.
People held up pens, used to sign birth registrations, in protest. One sign read,
You explain to my son that I am not his mother.”
Milan’s mayor Giuseppe Sala, tweeted his support of same-sex families and attended the protest. Organizers estimated around 10,000 people took part. Milan officials said it was in the hundreds.
10,000 people in the streets of Milan today, including the Mayor, Giuseppe Sala, to protest for the civil rights of Rainbow couples!! The Italian Left proposing new laws to protect same sex couples. #FamiglieArcobaleno 👨👨👧👦🏳️🌈https://t.co/MawIGGPiS1
— The Calitaliano Kid 😎🌻🇺🇦 #NeverForgetJan6 (@moved2italy2) March 18, 2023
Angelo Schillaci, a law professor at Sapienza University in Rome said,
Children end up having limited access to key services and benefits, such as healthcare, inheritance and child support.
At present, only one parent is recognised by law, the other one is a ghost. In real life, parents and children play together, cook together, play sports and go on holiday together. But on paper, they are apart, the state does not see them.
It’s a paradoxical situation.”
Rome and Milan, as well as other cities, had instituted a Parent 1/Parent 2 policy on birth registrations rather than the traditional mother/father designations, but last week the Interior Ministry ordered the city of Milan to stop the practice and said it would order other cities’ birth registrars to also halt the practice.
In 2016 Italy was the last country in Europe to legalize same-sex unions but it still does not recognize “stepchildren adoption” or surrogacy, this is because of opposition from the Catholic Church.
