A maxi-amendment to a
Democratic Party (PD) civil unions bill passed in a vote of
confidence in the Senate on Thursday.
The motion was approved with 173 in favor, 71 against and
none abstaining.
Senators from the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement (M5S)
boycotted the vote.
The bill passed after the PD scrapped two key measures in a
compromise with Catholic conservatives - one that would have
allowed stepchild adoptions and the other imposing a duty of
fidelity.
The bill's rapporteur, PD Senator Monica Cirinnà, said the
confidence vote on this watered-down version of the bill was a
hollow victory.
"It's first step - a victory with a hollow heart," said
Cirinnà. "This is a very important measure, but I am also
thinking of the children of so many friends".
"Now we must take a second step," Cirinnà said. "We're
halfway up the ladder".
The bill now goes to the Lower House.
PD Premier Matteo Renzi hailed the vote on "a day that will
remain in the history of this legislature and of our country".
"By requesting a confidence vote, we bound the government's
very survival to a civil rights battle," the premier wrote on
Facebook.
"It hadn't happened before, and it wasn't easy now. But it
was the right thing to do".
"Today Italy is a stronger country. Today we are all made
stronger," Renzi wrote.
In related news, a group of Senators presented a bill to
remove a section in the civil code referring to the obligation
for spouses to be faithful to one another - after conservative
Catholics forced a similar removal from the civil unions bill.
The bill was presented by Senator Laura Cantini from the
ruling PD and backed by 11 others. Cantini said the marriage
fidelity obligation was a "legacy of an outdated vision of
marriage".
She said another Italian law had removed the distinction
between legitimate and natural children, which was linked to the
fidelity obligation. Furthermore, she said the agreement
political parties have reached on civil unions recognised "a
more advanced model" of conjugal relations that needed to be
acknowledged in the civil code.
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