two (very) lively months – Corriere.it

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It is not true that political-cultural battles are no longer fought in Italy. Perhaps they only involve active minorities, but these confrontations/clashes are still there, and how (not to mention when they derail, like on Saturday afternoon at the Turin Book Fair with the minister of the Roccella family who has been prevented from presenting her book for dozens of activists). To represent the fault that divides Italian society on these issues, the months of May and June are exemplary. On the one hand, the defense of the traditional family, May. On the other, LGBT rights, June. In May there were the States General on the birth rate – with Giorgia Meloni and Pope Francis -; then the collection of signatures in the squares of FdI and Lega to make surrogacy (which on this side of the fence they call uterus for rent) a universal crime; finally the Roman event Per la vita, a sort of continuation of the old Family day, whose first edition was on May 12 (again) 2007.

At that time, the Catholic Forum of Family Associations contested the Prodi government’s Dico, an instrument by which both heterosexual and homosexual cohabitations were recognized; in 2023 the node that mobilizes the fronts is another – surrogacy – but the division in society, more or less, remains the same as then. The point of collapse of the May front is a bill, first signed by FdI deputy Carolina Varchi, which asks to extend the punishment of the crime of surrogacy of maternity to acts committed by an Italian citizen abroad. At the beginning of the month, while in Rome from the stage of the States General on the birth rate, the premier, also strengthened by the closeness (in that case also physical) of the Pope, said: Maternity is not for sale, in Turin (and who knows if there is here was a symbolic contrast between papal Rome and Risorgimento Turin) hundreds of centre-left mayors gathered, determined to continue with the registration of the children of same-parent couples, incited on that occasion to civil disobedience by the constitutionalist Gustavo Zagrebelsky. In June, which is Gay Pride Month – which have now become major demonstrations in favor of LGBT rights in many cities – the other side of the fence will express itself. The deputy dem Alessandro Zan said: The majority that governs the homophobic country. The Democratic Party stuttered in the past, now with Elly Schlein it will no longer stutter. On these issues, the month of June will also be a testing ground for her.

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