Family vs. solidarity

Taking family matters seriously is a distinct, internationally renowned trait of Italian culture. This often ignites fierce feelings, touching upon a bundle of deep-rooted, yet changing values, such as personal autonomy, masculinity, motherhood, reproduction, etc., which have significant implications on national identity itself.

In recent times, new influences have shown that such a bundle of values might sometimes be founded upon reactionary and discriminatory premises, and/or produce unacceptably hard consequences on those who do not conform to the predominant rule. Due to diffuse and diehard prejudices in many parts of Italy, men and women (whom we today call gays and lesbians) continue to face discrimination based on a personal characteristic such as (homo)sexual orientation.

Discrimination which, for its traits, does not belong to the experience of those, heterosexual people, who are not normally marginalised on grounds of (hetero)sexual orientation. The stereotypes which branded the former with characteristics of unreliability or sickness still contribute to ensuring that same-sex couples remain at a distance from ‘conjugality’, the socially recognised place – whether we like it or not – for profound commitment and the most significant existential dynamics of love, care, and moral and material communion.

Despite an ongoing need to do so, in this paper I do not purport to discuss or demonstrate discrimination in family matters, nor to address (at least explicitly) the most openly homophobic discourses. Rather, my concern stems from the intrinsic discriminatory arguments present in the rhetoric of those who claim to favour the promotion of equal treatment and individual rights and liberties. Without any claim to thoroughness, I will briefly survey the debate surrounding constitutional values and principles relevant for the matter at hand, as well as the three main bills on de facto partnerships that have attracted public and institutional attention. The survey will serve a twofold aim: it will inform the reader both as to the content of the various proposals, and as to the cultural and political frame of reference within which the proposals found their origin.

By juxtaposing and comparing the three proposals, which have succeeded one another in a relatively short time, I hope to be able to show the reader the different, yet homogenous, political objectives and theoretical or cultural references which underpin each of them, in addition to their material content. The three bills can be seen as the unique testimony of the profound implications of the ‘pull-and-let-go’ exercise typical of Italian society and politics. An exercise which, regrettably, mainly descends from the desire to please the wishes of the moderate (mostly) catholic sectors of the population, as well as the official religious predicaments based on clearly antiquated binary notions of right vs wrong, natural vs innatural, and moral vs immoral.

In my view, whilst the process of law reform and modernization should be welcomed if based on values such as personal autonomy and equality, the censoring temptations which have always contributed to the disappearance of same-sex couples, or to the (self)portrayal as something different and less worthy, must be taken seriously, and even more seriously when they propagate from progressive, left-wing narrations of equality and legal recognition. When the worth of family life of such couples is downgraded to a mere matter of competency for the population registry, or once again ignored through the segregation in hybrid legal schemes, it means that there is a severe gap in the ability to seriously question the reiteration of such concepts of ‘family’ and ‘nature’ which reinforce social and legal exclusion or marginalization.

Therefore, every attempt at law reform in this sense should be regarded with utmost suspicion. My conclusion is that the current Italian anomaly lies precisely in the fact that, masked by the promotion of the much cherished constitutional value of ‘solidarity’, there seems to be only one viable option for progressive political parties and scholars: the reductionist hypothesis. I use this formula to indicate the widespread and predominant incapacity or unwillingness to approach the matter of equality for same-sex couples in any other way that differs from that of diluting the specific problems into broader issues concerning all sorts of cohabiting arrangements based on solidarity or, as they are also called, ‘reciprocal help’.

(continua)

Allegati

ULR.pdf