Italian gay rights vote could topple government

Prime minister ready to call confidence vote to end deadlock in battle with liberals and Vatican

ITALY’S prime minister has gambled his political future on a gay rights vote that has sparked a battle between the Vatican and influential liberals.

Matteo Renzi said he was prepared to call a confidence vote in his centre-Left government to break the deadlock over the bill on civil unions for homosexuals. Mr Renzi, 39, is under mounting pressure to appease pro-Vatican politicians in his own party while maintaining his 2014 pledge to grant rights to same-sex couples.

Last summer, the European Court of Human Rights ruled Italy was violating human rights by failing to offer adoption, pension sharing and tax breaks for same-sex couples. The civil unions bill is stalled in the Italian senate after opposition parties last week scuppered a bid by Mr Renzi’s Democratic Party to accelerate its progress.

“We’re not getting anywhere like this,” Mr Renzi said yesterday, adding that he hoped to end “the debating game being played in the Senate”.

Opinion surveys suggest that most Italians would be in favour of gay civil unions, but were Mr Renzi to call a confidence vote and lose it, he would face the prospect of returning to the polls just as he enters his third year in office.

To reach the necessary number of votes, Mr Renzi is considering throwing out the controversial parenting provision of the legislation, which would allow for adoption of the gay partner’s biological child. That in turn has earned him criticism from gay rights groups, who say the draft legislation will be worth little without equal adoption rights and have pledged to send busloads of protesters to Rome tomorrow. The second chamber of Italy’s parliament is due to resume discussion of the bill tomorrow.

Yesterday, more than 400 artists, musicians, writers and other high-profile public figures in Italy and abroad urged swift passage of the law as written via a Change.org petition, which had garnered nearly 50,000 signatures by last night.

Julianne Moore, who starred in the Oscar-nominated The Kids Are All Right, about a lesbian couple bringing up children, voiced her support at this year’s Berlin Film Festival. “Everyone having a family is a matter of human rights,” she said.

The question of gay parenting has created a deep ideological rift in a country where the Roman Catholic church still wields considerable power when it comes to defining what constitutes a traditional family.

Surrogacy remains illegal in Italy. Catholic groups have expressed concern that the bill’s adoption provision could pave the way for use of surrogates by gay couples. The Catholic Church has been extremely active in lobbying politicians, earning a public rebuke for interfering in politics from Mr Renzi earlier this month.