Court rejects Italian government’s attempt to remove lesbian moms from birth certificates

In the face of far-right prime minister Georgia Meloni’s ongoing assault on LGBTQ+ rights in Italy, lesbian moms in the country have won a small victory as a court in the Veneto region rejected the government’s attempt to erase the names of non-biological mothers from their children’s birth certificates.

Last June, a state prosecutor in Padova associated with the ruling Brothers of Italy party called for the cancellation of 33 birth certificates listing non-biological mothers of children of lesbian couples. The documents were issued as far back as 2017.

Related:

Italy orders cities to stop recognizing children of same-sex couples

People were protesting in the streets.

The legal ramifications for those mothers could be far-reaching if the couples separate or the biological mother dies or becomes incapacitated.

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Last March, Meloni’s Interior Ministry sent letters to local governments across the country demanding an end to the practice of listing “parents” on birth certificates, instead of a “mother” and “father.” Hundreds took to the streets in protest.

Prosecutors for Meloni’s Interior Ministry will likely appeal the ruling. In a similar case in June, a Milan court ruled that a child’s birth certificate could have two mothers listed on it, but that decision was overturned in February.

The Veneto court’s ruling is the latest rebuke to Meloni’s far-right government as she continues her push to erode the rights of LGBTQ+ parents in the country.

“I do not believe in a state that places the legitimate desire of a homosexual to adopt a child before the right of that child to have a father and a mother,” Meloni said in a statement that purports to sympathize with the desire of gay people to become parents and simultaneously denies it.

Meloni began her political career in 1992 as a member of the neo-fascist Youth Front, founded in 1946 among the remnants of fascist dictator Benito Mussolini’s followers. She became leader of the far-right Brothers of Italy party in 2014 and was elected the country’s first woman prime minister in October 2022. She made anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric a cornerstone of her campaign and government agendas.

Meloni opposes marriage equality, calling civil unions “good enough” for LGBTQ+ couples.

And while same-sex civil unions have been legal in Italy since 2016, gay couples don’t have the right to adopt — a right fiercely opposed by the Catholic Church and Meloni’s government. Additionally, the adoption of “stepchildren” by one gay parent is barred, and medically assisted reproduction, like IVF, is limited to heterosexual couples.

“Yes to the natural family, no to LGBT lobbies,” Meloni declared last summer.

Like Russian President Vladimir Putin, her ideological ally to the east, Meloni has conjured an enemy in the so-called international LGBTQ+ rights movement that she believes is a threat to the moral fabric and family values of her country.

“It’s their game. They want us to be parent one, parent two, LGBT gender, Citizen X… codes,” claimed Meloni in 2019.

“We are not codes,” she added. “We are people and we will defend our identity.”