Italian government confirms ‘father’ and ‘mother’ on identity cards

This was declared by Minister Eugenia Roccella, head of the Family and Equal Opportunities department in the Meloni government. Roccella reacted in the Italian daily la Repubblica on a judge’s verdict in a case of a lesbian couple that wanted the gender-neutral form on their identity card. The couple won, but the government will not take any action.

“There was a lot of noise about that decision”, says Roccella. “However, it is an individual sentence. Therefore it applies to the single couple that appealed.” Roccella furthermore confirmed that the Meloni government would not take any steps to change the current legislation. Couples that want a gender-neutral form on their identity cards “can always appeal.”

That is a smart move, says Alexander Schuster, a lawyer in dozens of cases on behalf of LGBT families. “Roccella’s strategy is intelligent because in this way, three-quarters of same-parent couples will give up”. An appeal carries some risks with it. There is always an unpredictable outcome of the legal dispute because each judge can decide in one direction or the opposite. And above all, with the certainty of expenses that are anything but modest.

The use of the terms ’parent 1’ and ‘parent 2’ was introduced in 2015 by the government of Matteo Renzi, reports the European Conservative. In April 2019, Matteo Salvini, then minister of the interior, reversed this provision and reinstated the terms’ father’ and ‘mother’ based on biological parenthood, prompting vigorous opposition from LGBT-rights groups and left-wing parties.