Tag Archives: Italy

The Guardian reports: Thousands of gay rights activists and LGBT families rallied in Rome to protest against the watering down of Italy’s civil unions bill, which no longer envisages adoption rights for homosexual couples. Protesters carried banners that read “We want equality” and sported the gay pride rainbow on their faces, with one man naked apart from a cardboard fig …

By a vote of 173-71, moments ago the Italian Senate approved civil unions. The bill now moves to the House of Deputies where easy passage is expected. LGBT groups are calling the win a bitter victory as it comes without the formal legalization of stepchild adoptions by same-sex parents. Big thanks to JMG reader Andrea for help with the translations …

The Italian Senate has begun its hearing on the hotly-contested civil unions bill, which no longer contains a provision for stepchild adoption by same-sex parents. Watch below. Italian speakers, help us out please. If the bill passes in the Senate today, it moves to the House Of Deputies where it’s expected to gain easy approval and then be signed into …

NOM’s shameless history of using fake photos continued yesterday when they posted the above image of a January 23rd gay rights rally in Milan, claiming that it’s from a recent anti-gay “Family Day” event in Rome. Hundreds of NOM’s supporters have happily shared the photo on Facebook, apparently willing to overlook the many rainbow flags clearly visible. Not to mention …

We had hoped to get a final vote today. Not so. Reuters reports: Italy on Wednesday postponed voting on legislation that offers homosexual couples legal recognition as some allies of Prime Minister Matteo Renzi pushed for the removal of a provision that allows limited adoption rights. This latest delay represented a setback for Renzi, who had promised to enact the …

Reuters reports: Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi rejected on Friday the Roman Catholic Church’s interference in a parliamentary debate on legislation that offers homosexual couples legal recognition and limited adoption rights. Renzi spoke a day after the head of the Italian bishops’ conference, Angelo Bagnasco, urged the upper house Senate to allow secret balloting when it votes on the bill, …

One of Italy’s far right parties has proposed thousands of amendments in an attempt to destroy the civil unions bill. The vote on the bill was yesterday postponed until Tuesday. ANSA reports: A conference of Senate whips on Wednesday postponed voting on the government’s hotly contested civil unions bill to next Tuesday. Earlier, the Senate rejected a motion to not …

Anti-LGBT groups and the Catholic Church have organized a massive rally taking place in Rome today against the civil unions bill under consideration in Parliament. The day began with Anonymous hacking the website of the group organizing the protest, replacing their banner with a “Love Is Love” message. The Guardian reports: Tens of thousands of people have gathered in Rome …

From the New York Times: Tens of thousands of people demonstrated Saturday in nearly 100 cities across Italy to urge the government to permit gay and lesbian couples to have civil unions and legally recognized families. Mirco Pierro, 39, rallied in front of the Pantheon in Rome with his partner and twin infants, saying he wanted “to defend the rights …

ANSA reports: Pope Francis said in a speech for the opening of judicial year of the Vatican’s Roman Rota tribunal that the Catholic Church cannot accept traditional families and other types of unions being given the same status. The pope said the Church’s recent two-year Synod process on the family “told the world that there can be no confusion between …

Italy’s The Local reports: In a move branded “indecent” by Italy’s biggest gay rights group, Catholic senators from Prime Minister Matteo Renzi’s Democratic Party have tabled [put forth] an amendment to draft legislation legalizing same sex unions which would require gay couples to prove they had not used a surrogate. If they cannot, the partner who is not the biological …

The International Business Times reports: Italian police have arrested an alleged paedophile priest amid media accusation he was protected by the local bishop. Detectives allege father Antonello Tropea, 44, used gay dating app Grindr to groom teenage boys who he then paid for clandestine encounters in the southern Calabria region. Tropea was held on 18 December at the end of …

Italian Interior Minister Angelino Alfano has won a battle before Italy’s highest administrative court which will force mayors to remove foreign same-sex marriages from city registries. Last year Rome Mayor Ignazio Marino defied Italian law by registering 16 marriages conducted abroad and his action was followed by several other mayors. The Gazzetta del Sud reports: “Last year my circular banning …

Italy’s long-awaited civil unions bill was at last introduced today in the upper chamber of the national legislature. Reuters reports: Italy is the only major country in the West that has not yet offered homosexual couples any legal rights as successive governments ran into determined opposition from parties close to the Roman Catholic Church. Prime Minister Matteo Renzi had promised …

In Italian priest has been suspended from his parish after telling a live TV audience that he can understand pedophilia because it’s caused by “affection seeking” children. Homosexuality, he went on to say, is just a sinful disease. The Independent reports: Don Gino Flaim, 75, of the diocese of Trento in Northern Italy, has been removed from his position and …

A Vatican priest working in the office of the Holy See was fired today immediately after he came out. Via Reuters: Monsignor Krzystof Charamsa was removed from his position at the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican’s doctrinal arm where he had worked since 2003, a statement said. Charamsa, 43, and a Polish theologian, announced he was …

A Italian study has linked homophobia with psychoticism in a research paper that should have been titled “Duh.” Via the International Business Times: Led by researchers at the University of L’Aquila in Italy, the team asked 551 university students, aged between 15 and 30, to complete several psychometric tests to examine the psychological factors that could correlate with homophobia. Using …

Spin recaps: One thousand musicians banded together in Italy to perform the Foo Fighters’ “Learn to Fly” all at once in an attempt to woo the band to come play a show for them. Let’s repeat that — 1,000 musicians. A thousand. “The Foo Fighters are not in Romagna since 1997, it’s time to get them back, but we need …

Via the Daily Mail: The European Court of Human Rights condemned Italy on Tuesday for failing to provide legal recognition to same-sex couples and said the country should introduce some form of civil union for homosexual couples. Italy is the only major western European country that does not recognise either civil partnerships or gay marriage. The country was taken to …

Breitbart celebrates: Hundreds of thousands of people travelled from all over Italy and Europe yesterday to protest against the proposed legalisation of gay marriage, and the teaching of ‘gender theories’ in schools. Gathering in the San Giovanni Square in Rome, with estimates of participants running from 300,000 to a million people, the protest put the ‘anti-Austerity’ protests held in London …