The one man in Italy preventing gay rights (hint: it’s not the pope)
After a huge gay rights protest, there’s still work to do
By Asher Kohn
Thousands of Italians marched for gay rights over the weekend, furious that their country is one of the few European nations left without legal recognition for same-sex couples. Prime Minister Matteo Renzi wants parliament to recognize civil unions. The disgraced but wildly popular Silvio Berlusconi has given civil unions a thumbs-up. Even Pope Francis has advised the Catholic Church to remain quiet on an issue they’re usually loud about.
So who is left to convince? Angelino Alfano, the sleepy-eyed minister of the interior. His goal is not to stop homosexuals from making love or creating a home together, but to prevent LGBT families from raising children. Alfano is against gay adoption and has suggested that surrogacy (a couple paying a woman to give birth to their child) be treated as a sexual offense, calling it “the most repugnant, illicit trade that man could have invented.”
Alfano is alluding to Italy’s past, when it was what one journalist called “the Wild West of fertility treatment.” Before a 2004 law banned many in-vitro methods, “reproductive tourism” was common in Italy. Conservative Italians were furious with what they saw as French and German parents renting space in Italian wombs.
While surrogacy is controversial, it’s also expensive — $10,000 isn’t a fortune, but it is out of the range for the vast majority of Italians. That makes surrogacy rare, but its existence gives Alfano a valuable argument. Civil unions, the argument goes, will mean gay families will want children. And the easiest way for them to find kids is adoption and surrogacy, which will bring Italy back to the crazy days before 2004. The argument is a way to hate gays without explicitly saying it.
Italy’s homophobia is often linked to its historical Catholicism, but the country has changed rapidly. As late as 1976, Pope Paul VI stated that homosexuals had either a false education or an incurable “pathological constitution.” This teaching was doctrine, but even doctrine can be ignored: The government began funding gay rights organizations in 1982. Italy’s first gay pride parade took Rome’s streets in 1994. And while gay rights activists have made progress in Italy, women have not. Less than half of all Italian women are employed, and they make about 15% less than their male counterparts.
It’s an economic injustice that benefits straight males. Gay adoption and surrogacy don’t. They create a family without the need for a straight man overseeing it all. This may be why an alliance of gay and female choice is a threat to conservatives like Alfano.
Anti-surrogacy is a way to deflect attention from rampant homophobia that led to a rash of suicides just three years ago. It’s a cold-hearted political gambit: directing outrage at the wealthy few in cities like Milan or Turin in order to distract from the desperation of thousands in Palermo and Naples.
The tide may finally be changing. Sicily, Alfano’s impoverished and conservative home island, elected an openly gay governor in 2013. The office of the pope, which had judged homosexuals for centuries, is now held by a man who said “If someone is gay and he searches for the lord and has good will, who am I to judge?” The Italian parliament will vote on civil unions in a few days. Alfano may have stoked too few fears a few years too late.
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