(by Stefania Fumo).
The Senate on Tuesday began
debate of the government's civil unions bill.
Rapporteur Monica Cirinnà from Premier Matteo Renzi's
Democratic Party (PD) told lawmakers the bill, now in its fourth
version, is "already a moderate synthesis" and therefore should
overcome resistance.
She said she had "felt on my own skin the effects of a
poisoned debate".
The "most false claim" - including in the media - was "that
we are introducing gay marriage and gay adoptions," she said.
The bill would introduce the right for gay partners in a
civil union to adopt each other's biological children.
Right now the children of same-sex couples risk ending up
in the foster system if one of their parents die, because the
surviving parent has no legal custody of them.
The bill would also extend to partners in a civil union
some of the rights heterosexual married couples enjoy, such as
the right to inherit a deceased spouse's benefits and property
and or to make decisions in their stead should one partner
become incapacitated.
Italy is the only western European country not to have
either legalised gay marriage or recognised civil unions between
same-sex couples.
The European Court of Human Rights in July 2015 condemned
Italy for failing to give gay couples legal "recognition and
protection", and said the State must change its laws to remedy
that.
The bill is opposed by conservatives, including some junior
members of Renzi's governing coalition, and by some Catholic
members of the premier's centre-left Democratic Party (PD).
The most controversial aspect is stepchild adoption, the
part of the bill making possible the adoption by one partner in
a civil union of the other partner's biological child.
The PD said earlier in the day it has rejected a request
from Interior Minister Angelino Alfano from the New Center Right
(NCD) party - a junior member of the governing left-right
coalition - to remove the stepchild adoption clause altogether.
The Northern League said earlier in the day it had cut
4,500 amendments to the bill, leaving about 500 of them.
Most of the remaining amendments are on adoption given the
League's stated wish to safeguard "a child's right to have a
mother and father".
The withdrawal of the amendments follows a deal with the
ruling PD which envisages the withdrawal of two so-called
'kangaroo' amendments that cancel out all similar amendments.
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