Italian Senate approves gay civil union bill

Senator Monica Cirinna’, left, celebrates with Senator Sergio Lo Giudice following a confidence vote at the Italian Senate, in Rome, Thursday, Feb. 25, 2016. Italy’s Senate voted Thursday to grant legal recognition to civil unions, as the last holdout in Western Europe took a compromise step to give some rights to gay couples after a bitter, years-long battle. AP Photo

ROME, Italy—Italy’s Senate on Thursday approved a landmark bill recognizing same-sex civil unions but only after removing a provision that would have allowed gay adoption, much to the disappointment of gay rights activists.

A final vote on the full text of the draft law—which campaign groups have criticized as watered-down—is seen as a formality and is expected within two months.

Italy is the only major European country to have so far given no legal rights to same-sex couples.

READ: Italian gay rights debate prompts rethink of sacred family

Prime Minister Matteo Renzi put his government on the line for the bill, resorting to a confidence vote on Thursday in the Senate to push through the amended text.

Renzi had also bowed to Catholic pressure with the so-called “super amendment,” which removes from the original text rights for same-sex pairs to adopt their partner’s children.

A requirement that couples be faithful was also dropped from the revised text.

It was approved by 173 votes to 71 against.

Renzi’s center-left Democratic Party failed to push through a more robust version of the bill last week, after the opposition Five Star Movement (M5S) withdrew its support at the last minute.

While diluted, the text maintains provisions including the obligation to mutual moral and material support, the right to a residence permit for foreign partners and to take a same-sex partner’s name.

The amended draft does not close the door on individuals in same-sex couples making case-by-case adoption requests, with a handful having already been approved by some courts in the name of the child’s best interest.

‘Dark page in history’

The bill now needs to go before a vote in the lower house, where Renzi has a more comfortable majority, and should in theory be fully approved within two months.

“The accord on civil unions is a historic event for Italy,” Renzi wrote on Twitter Wednesday.

Interior Minister Angelino Alfano told reporters the removal of the provision for gay adoption was a “victory for common sense.”

“We have given a great gift to Italy by preventing two people of the same sex from having a child, just as nature does,” he said.

“We are preventing a revolution against nature.”

Gay rights groups have voiced anger, on the streets and on social media, saying the bill has been diluted too much.

“We haven’t waited 30 years for this,” said a joint statement Thursday by some 30 groups, vowing to express their “anger… in the streets, before the courts and at the ballot box.”

“Today the Senate is preparing to write a dark page in the history of civil rights in our country by approving a law which… completely ignores the existence and demands of gay couples’ children,” they said.

The last attempt to push through such a bill was scuppered in 2007 by mass demonstrations against the center-left government of Romano Prodi, and the failure was cited as one of the reasons behind the fall of his government.