From the case of a Venetian couple, the challenge that can rewrite the law: if the Constitutional Court says yes, civil unions will also be able to adopt. The clash explodes over the right to a child, minors and the role of judges.
If the question of legitimacy were accepted by the Consulthomosexual couples in civil unions will also be able to adopt children. To ask the judges of the Court to express their opinion on the hypothesized unconstitutionality of the Italian legislation on the subject of adoptions It is the Juvenile Court of Venice, which positively assessed the appeal presented by two forty-year-old Venetians.
“They show a very solid and intense bond (…) a mature, balanced couple, trust and esteem in each other shines through (…) temperamentally they are the opposite but this does not divide them, rather it integrates them”, we read in the court order reported by Corriere della Sera. United civilly since 2019, they want to adopt a child from an orphanage abroad but article 6 of the law 184 on adoptions speaks clearly: «Adoption is permitted to spouses who have been married for at least three years».
The crux of the law on adoptions
The marital bond is a fundamental requirement, in Italy there is no legal marriage between people of the same sex and couples civilly united after marriage Cirinnà law of 2016 they cannot access joint adoption.
The Consulta, with ruling 33/2025had declared paragraph 1 of article 29 bis of the law in question unconstitutional “only” in the part in which it did not include single people resident in Italy among those who can present a declaration of availability for international adoption.
The Venice court maintains that the legislation is valid discriminating both for civilly united couples and for children and conflicts with the principles of European Convention on Human Rights. For the lawyer Valentina Pizzol, who assists the couple, the ban can be easily circumvented: “If our clients divorced, each of them could adopt a child and then even reconstitute the civil union”, she was keen to underline.
The precedent of the Consulta and the issue of singles
It is true, believing that when faced with a situation of abandonment and suffering of the child we must look at the concrete situation interestwith sentence 33 the Consulta has, however, opened only to people of free status and not to the members of civil unions.
The single can be LGBTbut sexual orientation does not seem to be a relevant criterion for evaluating his parental suitability, while the gay couples remain excluded. The constitutional judges had to imagine that sooner or later same-sex couples would also put their foot down to have the right to adopt a minor abroad recognized.
The political and cultural clash
A rule that prevents international adoption between two civilly united men has “no legitimate purpose and cannot find a plausible reason in light of the principle of equality“, claims the Juvenile Court, according to which the Venetian couple “has adequate resources to take care of abandoned minors”.
It’s good Pro life & family to protest, stating through his spokesperson Jacopo Coghe that the decision «to refer the rule on adoptions to the Constitutional Court is serious because it exploits and distorts the sense of supreme interest of a minor».
The association reminds us that «adoption exists to give to a child a mom and a dadnot to fulfill the adults’ “right to a child”. However, the Council, recognizing that singles are in abstract suitable to take care of an abandoned minor, suitable to offer a «stable and harmonious environment», last year opened the way to the demands of homosexuals too. It inaugurated «that dangerous drift of right to the child», as Coghe underlines.
Of course, then it is up to the juvenile judge to ascertain theemotional suitabilitythe ability to support and educate the aspiring parent, also taking into account the family network of reference, but if a single homosexual offers guarantees, his declaration of willingness to adopt a foreign minor residing abroad is not denied. And the homosexual couple then puts their foot down and rebels.
The controversy between courts
Pro Vita & Famiglia also denounces a «obvious contradiction» in the Italian juvenile judiciary: «While the Venice court wants to have a child adopted by gay couples, their colleagues from L’Aquila, with the family from the woods, tear them away from their natural parents. It is clear that judges must urgently review their evidently fallacious conception of “best interests of the minor”».
From the adoption case to the issue of the end of life
The rulings of the Council become the pretext to force the hand of the legislator also on the subject of assisted suicide. The dismissal of the investigations against Marco Cappato, treasurer of the Luca Coscioni association, who self-reported having accompanied two terminally ill patients who refused life support treatments to Switzerland in 2022, is shifting the issue of non-punishment recognized by the Consulta to a claim of generalized law «to aid in voluntary death».
The association has announced mobilizations in squares throughout Italy, from 6 to 19 April. The objective is to ask the government to withdraw the law which «would exclude the National Health Service (and, therefore, the Regions themselves) from these paths; it would limit the right to aid in voluntary death only to patients attached to a machine (thus excluding many terminal cancer patients or those suffering from neurodegenerative diseases); it would eliminate the role of local ethics committees, replaced by a national committee appointed by the government.” It would also be cancelled living willfor those who request help in voluntary death.
The final knot: self-determination and life
Despite the proclamations and the tones that promise to be increasingly heated, it should not be forgotten that the Consulta has always considered prejudicial at every end-of-life treatment the use of palliative care and that the culture of life goes hand in hand with the cure of suffering.
THE’self-determination Does it also apply to death choices?
