Majority and opposition in full agreement to sanction the right to discriminate and be homophobic.
From today, according to the recently modified text of the bill against homo-transphobia in Italy, you can insult any LGBT+ person and be homophobic, and still you would not be punished by law.
Oh yeah! Because if “Italy is a country that does not discriminate!”, then the flood of protests against the proposed law against homotransphobia that we are facing, and that are coming from the right parties, those extremist also the so called “Catholic-Fiscists”, do not makes no sense. Among the first ones to contest the bill we find Matteo Salvini who continues in full denial style, to shift media’s attention to something else, coming to sputtering absurd ideas as the one that there is no difference between a crime for homophobia or for heterophobia (phenomenon that doesn’t even exist). Without forgetting the dear and annoying Onorevole Pillon and his friend, the sweet single-mother (who fights for the traditional family), the always champion of fascism, Giorgia Meloni. Oh, sure … let’s not forget those good boys and men of Faith of the Italian Episcopal Conference who know a lot about what family means and about the protection of minors.
As also reported by IlPuntoH.com: “Usually those individuals who oppose (refuse or do not accept) to the existence of a specific community, within a society, such as the African American or the LGBT+ one, are by definition racist, in the first case, and homophobic, in the second one. They show a discriminatory attitude. We can ask ourselves if being homophobic or racist should be punishable by law and in what way. At this point here it comes the “Costa di Forza Italia” (an Italian right wing party) amendment to support the right to discriminate and to seek a compromise with the unified text on the bill against homotransphobia. The amendment voted by the majority with Forza Italia (maybe a technical evidence of a new majority?) reads as follows: “According to this law, free expression of convictions or opinions as well as legitimate conduct attributable to the pluralism of ideas and the freedom of choices do not constitute discrimination, nor instigation to discrimination, therefore cannot be punished by law.”
What surprises us with bitterness – and not a little – is precisely that the PM Monica Cirinnà (who promoted the law for civil partnerships in Italy) and PM Laura Boldrini seem to have first praised the modification as a real improvement of the bill, and then retracted – once several Italian LGBT+ associations have pointed out to them this attempt at modification – saying that in fact (and it didn’t take long to understand it!) this change only made the bill worse, being already weak and without any protection for the LGBT+ people who can still be laughed at, offended and victim of racism without any legal punishment for the homophobes who offend them.
