Matteo Salvini: Court of Appeal invalidates his 2019 birth registration order Photo credit: Flickr/European Parliament
Rome’s Court of Appeal has overturned a 2019 law requiring local authorities to use only the terms “mother” and “father” when registering a child’s birth.
Previously, some town halls and city halls used gender-neutral “Parent One” and “Parent Two” to facilitate birth registration for same-sex couples.
The situation ended when Matteo Salvini, the current deputy prime minister and minister of transport, led the Interior Ministry and submitted a 2019 decree calling on authorities to revert to traditional language.
He argued that limiting the term used on ID cards to “parent” was an example of “excessive political correctness.”
The current prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, also criticized the “one parent, two parents” system when she was still an opponent. “I’m a woman. I’m a mother. I’m Italian and I’m a Christian,” she declared. “You’re not going to take that away from me!”
Meloni is also on record as saying that his child “deserves only the best: a mother and a father.”
Italy’s LGTBQ+ community has accused Giorgia Meloni’s right-wing government of “trampling” on the parental rights of same-sex couples, but in any case these rights are incomparable to parental rights in most other European countries.
A same-sex couple has appealed against the Salvini decision, arguing that their child’s identity card should accurately show family structure and legal parentage.
An initial lower court hearing ruled in their favor, and that decision was upheld by the Rome Court of Appeal on February 15.
Salvini insisted the next day that the Court of Appeal’s decision was “wrong”. Ansa news agency reported that he said, “Cancelling the words ‘mother’ and ‘father’ is unreasonable and deserves condemnation.”
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