The limbo of families with homosexual parents in Italy: “It is very humiliating. They force you to make a false statement.

The irony is that the worst and the best days can turn out to be the same.

Ilaria Rossi and Anna Inverardi could not have felt happier the morning that Adele was born.

The road had been very long.

The trips to the assisted reproduction clinic in Denmark, several attempts, the physical, emotional and economic exhaustion.

And finally her birth in Brescia (northern Italy), at home.

But the next morning, when they went to the registry, the little girl had to be registered only as the daughter of one of them and of an unknown father.

This is how it worked and still works in Italy.

“It is a very humiliating moment.

They force you to make a false statement.

And you have to do it in the first days of the baby, when you are so happy.

And you are forced to declare that she only has one mother.

To deny your partner and rob the girl of a mother.

Italy, the country that hosts the Vatican, has never wanted to have a rule that recognizes the children of families formed by two people of the same sex.

Not even the left in 2016, when it approved the law on civil unions, dared to take that step.

A fight that associations like Famiglie Arcobaleno have been committed to in a country where battles of this type have always been complicated.

However, many progressive municipalities such as Milan or Turin opened municipal records to protect those 150,000 families in Italy.

A fundamental measure so that one of the two fathers or mothers can do such basic things as travel outside of Italy with the minor, enroll him in school, vaccinate him, leave him the entire inheritance or, simply, have custody of him in the event of the death of His couple.

That record was just a patch.

But it helped.

And now the ultra-right-wing Executive of Giorgia Meloni has ordered all government delegates from the regions to ban them.

In addition, the State Attorney's Office is presenting appeals to eliminate registered children from these databases and return them to the limbo of a single parent.

The government's agenda is clear.

And the lyrics of the ultra-conservative music on the social issue are written by the Minister for Equality, Family and Birth, Eugenia Roccella.

A longtime anti-abortion activist from the Radical Party who fervently converted to the far-right pro-life movements.

"Our family model provides for a father and a mother", she settled on a television program last week.

In addition, the Senate commission, controlled by the majority of the right, refused that same week to approve the European certificate that tries to standardize this type of registration, also for families of foreign homosexual parents who arrive in Italy to spend a season and see canceled their rights.

The measure leaves the transalpine country aligned with Poland, Hungary, Romania, Latvia, Bulgaria, Slovakia and Lithuania.

Meloni, who always says she wants the kind of family for Italian children that she didn't have (her father, a late ex-convict for drug trafficking, abandoned the family when she was little), and her party warned him on the campaign trail.

The attack on the LGTBI community is sometimes dressed as a discourse against the types of reproduction that are not considered ethical.

But no one thought that the measure, the first feared attack on civil rights, would be so drastic.

“Unfortunately, when the elections were held, we were all clear about the positions of the candidate Meloni.

We were very afraid and hoped that she would not be chosen.

She is denying herself a reality that is widespread.

Italian society is prepared for this change, it is absurd to deny the evidence”, explains Ilaria.

The ordeal of these families is long.

Today, the only option, the one that Ilaria and Anna ended up choosing after winning an appeal that was again denied by the appeals court attended by the State Attorney, is to resort to adoption for particular cases, that of the child of the couple.

This is an extreme legal spring in which the State, prioritizing the emotional integrity of the minor, consents, among other things, to her adoption by a same-sex couple.

“It is tremendous.

And many parents don't want to.

You have to prove that you are worthy of adopting your child.

It's absurd and you never know what kind of social worker you'll find in front of you questioning you.

But the will to protect our daughter overpowered us.

For this reason we did not want to celebrate it, but my partner cried a lot:

Ryan and Giuseppe, along with their two children in Rome. Antonio Masiello (Antonio Masiello/EL PAIS)

The torment of families made up of two women has the particularity that in Italy only artificial insemination of the wife of a heterosexual couple is allowed.

That is why the most frequent trips are to Spain or Denmark.

Families made up of two men, as in most European countries, only have two options: adoption of the other's biological child (they cannot adopt as a couple) or surrogacy in countries like Mexico or the US, where It is legal in some states.

Just what Ryan and Giuseppe did, two 48-year-old Sardinians who have lived in Rome for two decades.

In 2015 they went to California and after a long process, they returned with two twins: Nina and Luca (today they are 8 years old).

The two children received US citizenship and were registered as children of two parents.

Upon arriving in Italy, Giuseppe automatically lost his authority and that recognition.

The parents could not even register them in the municipal registry of Rome: basically because the mayoress at the time, Virginia Raggi (5 Star Movement), and the current councilor, Roberto Gualtieri (Democratic Party), never wanted to implement it.

“This is all a political strategy.

They offend us in an incredible way, ”Ryan explains regarding the latest order from the Minister of the Interior to close municipal records.

“They also say that gay couples buy children.

But we have access to provision and legal mediation services, it also happens for international adoptions and there nobody talks about bought children”.

Ryan is vice president of the Arcobaleno (Italian for rainbow) family association.

And he points out the same thing as all those consulted for this report.

Italian civil society is ahead of the political class.

“In fact, I'd say it's light years away.

In daily life we ​​have never had any difficulties.

Our children are fully integrated.

No one has ever told us anything, ”he points out.

Last Saturday, some 10,000 people demonstrated in Milan against this measure and asked that a situation that leaves thousands of children out in the open be regulated.

Demonstration in Milan of homoparental families against the decision of the Meloni Government to prevent the registration of both parents. GABRIEL BOUYS (AFP)

The new secretary of the PD, Elly Schlein, assured that she will make it a priority fight.

Stefania Santilli, a lawyer who defends homoparental families, believes that "the design of the law presented by homosexual families should be discussed."

“They are already beginning to talk about it in Parliament.

All these children cannot be left waiting for a decision that will come within two years (the time it takes for the adoption process).

Adoption is not the fair or correct legal figure.

It is not intended for civil union couples, it is the adaptation of another legal figure and contains passages that are unfair to families.

But it's a form of recognition and it's important to remember that."

The problem is that, until now, the left had not done anything either.

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