Unable to Marry Gay Couples, Some Italian Mayors Rebel
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Version 0 of 1. ROME — The crowd at an ornate room in Rome’s City Hall erupted in applause as the mayor entered, wearing his formal green, white and red sash, and clapped in turn. The brides and grooms bent forward to sign an official registry. Guests hoisted babies, snapped pictures and dabbed away tears. While the ceremony on Saturday had all the trappings of a traditional civil wedding, it was a wedding in spirit only. All the couples had previously been legally married before, though not in Italy, where same-sex marriage is not recognized. By registering the marriages, Rome’s mayor, Ignazio Marino, joined a budding political rebellion by a growing number of mayors around Italy. With such registrations, the mayors hope to force the hand of national legislators to clarify a deepening legal muddle around gay unions, particularly for gay Italians married abroad. “Today is a special day, but we still have a long way to go so that this may become a normal day,” Mr. Marino said. “Because of the unfortunate lack of a national law, I can only register it” — an act with more symbolism than legal impact. Even if same-sex marriage is not legally recognized in Italy, local officials have increasingly been confronted with requests by gay couples to at least recognize the legal standing of unions officiated in places where same-sex marriage is allowed, like the fellow European Union countries Belgium and Spain, Canada and a growing number of American states. Such registrations can help gay couples navigate Italy’s labyrinthine bureaucracy around a range of everyday problems, such as taking parental leave or allowing a non-European spouse to live in Italy. But it still leaves them far short of the full rights of married couples. The small — and still contested — concession to gay couples began only in the spring, when a court ordered a Tuscan mayor to register a marriage that was joined in New York. Afterward, mayors in various parts of the country started doing the same, upon request. In early October, however, Italy’s interior minister, Angelino Alfano, from the New Center-Right, issued an order for all prefects to annul such registrations, dismissing the documents as mere “autographs.” Many local government offices urged city officials to cancel the registrations. Mr. Marino and many others refused, on the grounds that only magistrates can annul mayoral acts. “It’s the first time that politics clashes with politics on these issues,” said Gianfranco Goretti, 49, who along with his husband, Tommaso Giartosio, 51, was among 16 couples who registered their marriages in Rome on Saturday. “It’s the administration, a mayor, who says that Parliament has to regulate the situation of gay couples with or without children,” added Mr. Goretti, a longtime gay-rights activist. “It used to be that we challenged the institution.” In the jurisdictional and political chaos that has ensued, the government of Prime Minister Matteo Renzi recently proposed a national law to allow civil partnerships and stepchild adoption, but not same-sex marriage. Mr. Renzi has vowed to pass a law before the end of the year, soon after the approval of the constitutional and electoral changes that have been in the works since he took power in February. “The position of the Italian government is advanced because it would include us among the advanced countries, but prudent,” said Ivan Scalfarotto, an activist and an under secretary in Mr. Renzi’s government. “None of this changes the fact that a G-7 country” — the Group of 7 industrialized democracies — “among the founders of the E.U., doesn’t have a law on same-sex marriage,” he added. While others argue for the government to go further, many observers say that Italy is slowly becoming more attuned to gay rights, despite some vocal opponents. In recent weeks, the former conservative prime minister Silvio Berlusconi hosted a dinner with a famous transgender former member of Parliament, Vladimir Luxuria, and has come out in favor of civil partnerships, saying he was persuaded by his young girlfriend. Pope Francis, too, has led the Roman Catholic Church to openly discuss gay couples and their problems as part of the Catholic community, while not endorsing same-sex marriage. “Civil society, the people we work with every day, is way more progressive than politicians,” said Laura Terrasi, the 39-year-old wife of Marilena Grassadonia. They, too, had their marriage, conducted in Spain, registered Saturday by Rome’s mayor. “We lead normal lives, but we do need same-sex marriage in Italy,” she said, explaining that together the couple have three children — a 7-year-old boy who is biologically her son, and twins who are Ms. Grassadonia’s — who must live in a kind of legal limbo. “The worst is that our children are de facto siblings,” she said. “But by last name and by law, they are not. It’s so unjust.” Mr. Giartosio’s and Mr. Goretti’s children — Andrea, 6, and Lia, 8, who strolled around the ceremony room that day — face similar hurdles. The couple first symbolically married in a seaside house near Rome in 1998, then in California in 2008 after same-sex marriage became legal there. In recent years, they registered their names as a couple in the civil unions’ list in two different districts of Rome, as that option became available. “You know, marriage, like parenthood, is not easy for anyone,” Mr. Giartosio confessed. “When Andrea was about 1, one day he just said, ‘Mom.’ I froze with the fork in my hand. It’s the utmost expression of affection, I was later told.” Mr. Giartosio mused over whether they would marry a sixth time, if same-sex marriage became legal in Italy. “Will we then get married again, or just register our American wedding?” Mr. Giartosio asked. “Maybe it will happen in time to celebrate our silver or golden anniversary.” |