Italian parties are divided over the European Parliament’s recent condemnation of anti-LGBTIQ rhetoric in Italy which raises concerns over similarities to existing sentiments in Hungary and Poland.
On Thursday, the EU Parliament approved an amendment condemning the spread of “anti-rights, anti-gender and anti-LGBTIQ rhetoric” by some influential political leaders and governments in the European Union, including Italy, along with Hungary and Poland.
“The Parliament expresses concern about the current anti-rights, anti-gender and anti-LGBTIQ rhetorical movements globally, fuelled by some political and religious leaders around the world, including in the EU”, reads the amendment’s text.
Moreover, it believes that “such movements significantly hinder efforts to achieve the universal decriminalisation of homosexuality and transgender identity, as they legitimise the rhetoric that LGBTIQ people are an ideology rather than human beings”.
“To trivialise and instrumentalise the recent events in Uganda and the discriminatory laws that even provide for the death penalty on LGBT rights, putting Italy in the middle and comparing it to an autocratic country, is a serious offence for a democratic and civilised country like ours”, MP Patrizia Marrocco of the governing party Forza Italia told EURACTIV Italy.
“The centre-right government will not retreat one iota on acquired LGBT rights, nor will it ever discriminate against anyone according to sexual inclination. Enough of this sterile rhetoric: you don’t play or make propaganda on such sensitive issues”, the MP, who is also a member of the Social Affairs Committee in the Italian Chamber of Deputies, has said.
On the side of the opposition, however, the Democratic Party (PD/Socialists & Democrats), which has long pointed to the “dangerous drift” of Italian right-wingers toward government models such as those of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and his Polish counterpart Mateusz Morawiecki.
“The European Parliament certifies what we in Italy already know very well: because of the government’s wicked choices on rights, and not only that, we are increasingly aligned with the positions of the Visegrad Group”, Senator Cecilia D’Elia (PD/S&D) told EURACTIV Italy.
“A founding state of the European Union cannot afford this drift, which we will continue to oppose with all our strength”, she added.
The Green delegation included the amendment approved in the EU House in the report on the universal decriminalisation of homosexuality, which was also approved after Uganda passed a law punishing homosexuality with up to ten years in prison or the death penalty in some cases.
(Federica Pascale | EURACTIV.it)
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Source: euractiv.com
