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Hilary White
LifeSiteNews
August 5, 2013
Today’s session of the Italian Lower House is the last opportunity Deputies will have to discuss a highly contentious “anti-homophobia” law that opponents have said will shut down and criminalize any public opposition to “gay marriage,” civil unions, or homosexuals adopting children.
Avvenire, the official newspaper of the Italian Catholic bishops’ conference, has said that, as in Britain, this law could usher in prosecutions against religious associations or clergy who publicly denounce the homosexual act as a sin.
The strongest objections have warned that Italy could be following the same path as Britain by introducing a law that would strike at freedom of thought, expression, and religious belief, all rights that are explicitly defined by the Constitution.
Critics of the bill, who include constitutional legal experts as well as the Italian Catholic bishops, have warned that the bill will make it a criminal act to publicly recite scriptural passages against homosexual activity or to repeat Catholic teaching that homosexuality is “intrinsically disordered,” or contrary to the natural law.
Despite a marathon amendment session on July 22, critics of the bill maintain that it “remains even after the changes, a dangerous legal point of view.” Gianfranco Amato, head of Giuristi per la Vita, said in a letter to parliamentarians July 28, that the bill as it stands risks “creating a sort of ‘judicial crime’” with undefined terms being inserted into existing law.
“Everything concerns us deeply,” he wrote, “because, especially in the light of what is happening in other European countries, with the new proposed rules it will be considered ‘homophobic behavior,’ for example, to publicly support preventing homosexuals and transsexuals from ‘marrying’ and adopting children, or to say that that homosexuality is a ‘serious depravity,’ citing the scriptures of the Christian religion.”
Powerful international interests are working behind the scenes to ensure the law passes. Amnesty International Italy wrote last week to all Deputies asking them to “ensure that sexual orientation and gender identity are included in the list of discriminatory grounds.”
At 6 p.m. Rome time tonight, the Deputies announced that they would be remaining in a late night session Monday night to discuss the bill. If it is passed, it will move on to the Senate.
Tonight legislators in support of the bill have complained that the more than 400 amendments introduced in the Lower House have gutted its main provisions. Michela Marzano, a Deputy with the Partito Democratico who supports the bill, told La Repubblica, “First, the text comes here incomplete. It lacks all of the aggravating circumstances for homophobia and transphobia that we proposed as amendments, so I don’t know if it will be OK. No, it would just be an empty law and even I would vote no.”
