Italy Is Erasing The Names Of Lesbian Mums From Their Children’s Birth Certificates

Months after Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s right-wing government announced that children of same-sex couples would no longer be registered, Italy has begun the process of erasing lesbian mums from birth records. 

Meloni, who leads the far-right Brothers of Italy party, won the elections last year and promised to oppose ‘LGBT lobbies’ and ‘gender ideology’. Meloni is also opposed to same-sex marriages saying civil unions were “good enough” for gay couples, reported the BBC.

“Yes to the natural family, no to LGBT lobbies,” Meloni said last year. 

Same-sex marriages have been legal in Italy since 2016, but gay adoptions are banned in the country. Surrogacy is illegal and assisted reproduction procedures like IVF are only available to heterosexual couples. 

Contrary To Public Order

In March, Meloni’s government ordered local councils to stop the practice of recognising same-sex couples as “parents” on their children’s birth certificates. 

Since then many councils have stopped registering children of same-sex couples. In June, the prosecutor of the northern city of Padua sent letters to 27 same-sex families about the decision to remove the names of same-sex parents from the previously granted birth certificates of their children. The prosecutor in a letter said that the inclusions of the names of same-sex parents were “contrary to public order”, reported the Daily Mail.  Around 33 children were affected by the move. 

“It was as if I did not exist,” Michela one of the mothers told Daily Mail, after receiving a letter from the Padua prosecutor to remove her name from her child’s birth certificate as she was not the biological mother. 

Italy’s Laws Outdated

LGBTQI groups have criticised the decision. “The decision of the Padua Public Prosecutor’s Office to challenge 33 birth certificates retrospectively, in some cases years after they were transcribed, is surreal,” Gabriele Piazzoni, general secretary of LGBTQI advocacy group Arcigay said in a statement.

“Suddenly, dozens of children are deprived of the right to be protected, raised and protected by their parents. It is an unprecedented act, which uses cruelty as a spectacular element, brandishing it to the people like gladiators in the arena. And he throws little boys and girls into the arena”. 

Piazzoni said it was not a coincidence that the Padua Prosecutor’s Office decided to challenge the transcripts of the birth certificates of these children years after they were issued. 

“Italy remains the only country in Western Europe that does not want to apply the principle of safeguarding the interests of minors in order to prevaricate those with different opinions and models,” said Piazzoni. 

“It is time for the whole country to mobilise in support of these families and to protect those minors: we will pour all our anger into our Prides. Because it is necessary to recognize new family forms with a structural revision of the law on adoptions and of the legislation on transcriptions of foreign birth certificates and by providing for direct recognition at the birth of sons and daughters regardless of the sex of the parents,” added Piazzoni.