IMAGINE THAT YOUR family is being torn apart.
Imagine that your government, the people who are sworn to protect your civil liberties, have decided that your family is ‘unnatural’ and that because of this, your child’s birth certificate must be altered.
Your child will have one of their parents removed from their birth certificate, leaving a blank space and a gaping legal vacuum.
If you are Italian, you don’t have to imagine this nightmare because it is your reality.
In January this year, Italy’s right-wing government quietly told state agencies to cease the registration of children born to same-sex couples.
When the order was revealed publicly in March by the mayor of Milan, it sparked fear and outrage amongst the global LGBTQ+ community. (The centre-left mayor said that while he had to obey the order, he would do all he could for same-sex couples.)
In June 2023, however, a state prosecutor in northern Italy ordered the cancellation and re-issuance of 33 birth certificates of lesbian couples’ children.
Non-gestational mothers, or those who have not given birth, are receiving letters informing them that they are being retroactively removed from their children’s birth certificates.
New birth certificates are being issued listing the name of only one of the child’s mothers.
Under current Italian law, the member of a same-sex couple who is not legally recognised as the child’s parent could lose custody if the legally recognised parent dies or the relationship ends.
As an LGBTQ+ parent in Ireland, I know all too well the fear of living in a family unrecognised by the state.
From 2016 to 2021, my wife and I lived in a strange legal limbo where I was considered a single parent to our two daughters and she was considered a legal stranger to her own children.
Thankfully, due to legislation which was enacted in 2020, we were able to go to court in 2021 to rectify this wrong. Our children were given new birth certificates.
I cannot imagine how I would feel if we were to be told that my wife’s name was going to be once again removed from our daughters’ birth certificates.
At Equality for Children, the non-profit of which I am the CEO, we have been campaigning for equal rights for children of LGBTQ+ parents in Ireland since 2019. We have made some progress to date with some same sex female couples being able to have both of their names on their children’s birth certificates.
However there is much left to do. In fact, I am currently pregnant with our third child and due to the failure of the state to enact additional legislation, I will once again be forced to register as the sole parent to this child, creating inequity within our own family.
The challenges that these Italian non-biological mothers are facing in Italy now (consent for travel, medical and educational purposes) are the same as those faced by the majority of LGBTQ+ people in Ireland who still do not have a legal tie with their children.
It is quite simply terrifying as a parent and as a human being to see what is happening in Italy, where a conservative government is having a devastating impact on the queer community.
One cannot wonder if the same could happen anywhere? We think we live in a liberal Ireland, where queer rights are championed. But until we have robust legislation to protect all children and all families, many LGBTQ+ families will continue to live in fear and uncertainty for the future.
The situation in Italy has been spearheaded by Giorgia Meloni who is well known for her anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric, which was a cornerstone of her campaign for office.
She opposes marriage equality as well as allowing same-sex couples to adopt, calling civil union “good enough” for LGBTQ+ couples. “Yes to natural families, no to the LGBT lobby!” she said in a speech last year. Her belief is that ‘a child deserves only the best: a mother and a father’.
To that I say… No Giorgia. What children deserve, is to grow up in a family and a society that treats them as an equal, regardless of how they were conceived or the sex of their parents.
Children deserve love, security and equal access to all of the rights afforded to every citizen of their country.
We will protest today in solidarity with all of the lesbian mothers affected by this in Italy and for all of the LGBTQ+ families who are still not considered as equal families in the eyes of the law.
Our children deserve equality. No more and no less.
Ranae von Meding is co-founder and CEO of Equality for Children, a campaign for equality for children of LGBT+ parents in Ireland
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