First adoption for gay couples in Italy

(ANSA) - Rome, August 29 - A Rome court on Friday approved the first adoption of a child by a gay couple in Italy.
    The girl is the biological child of one of two lesbians, a professional couple.
    It was the first Italian instance of stepchild adoption. Italy does not recognize other civil rights of gay couples living together, unlike the laws in some other countries.
    The couple, who have been together for 10 years, conceived their five-year-old daughter through an assisted fertility procedure in an unspecified European location, their lawyer Maria Antonia Pili said.
    She said Italy's laws are based on finding what is best for the child and the best possible family situation in any adoption case. This Rome court ruling follows a decision by the country's high Cassation Court which, in January 2013, approved adoption by gay couples where one partner is the parent of the child in question so long as authorities determine there is no threat to the child's development.
    That high court ruling involved the 2011 case of a Muslim immigrant couple in Brescia where the mother of a young son had left her male partner for a lesbian relationship.
    The boy's father argued that was an unhealthy arrangement for the child, but the Cassation Court disagreed, saying that it required much more proof of a detrimental environment than the mere fact the mother was in a gay relationship.