‘It's awful to feel discriminated against because someone wants to keep you in a state of inferiority. When you're discriminated against by a specific person, you can always fight back, use the ignorance of others as a shield, but when the discrimination you suffer comes from someone else, from the state then it's very different, much worse: total disappointment, because it's the sign of the failure of an entire society.
And it is precisely this second case, unfortunately, that concerns the writer.
I am a Italian resident in Rotterdam and married there, with another man, since June 2003.
But what does the Italian state think of my love for Jaco, my legitimate husband? I discovered this to my bitter disappointment when it came time to renew my passport at the Italian Consulate General in Amsterdam. Jaco had just renewed his at the Municipality of Rotterdam, and on the first page, among his personal details, the words "married to Bucci" were clearly visible. And he is rightly proud of this.
I, too, a little too well-intentioned, expected to receive the same treatment from the Italian government. But no. In fact, on December 4th, I received a registered letter from the Consulate in which the administrative registrar, Ms. Giovanna Grazia Grasso, wrote to me: ""We hereby return to you the marriage certificate with its translation, but without further follow-up, as it cannot be transcribed since our legal system does not provide for marriage between persons of the same sex."‘.
But what about this infamous European Union? What about the free movement of citizens? Yet the European Constitution, in Article 69, states that any discrimination based on sexual orientation is prohibited. Isn't this discrimination? In short, money and goods cross EU borders, but gay couples remain... entangled in the legal contradictions and legislative prejudices of certain states.
‘Italy signs the constitution with one hand and blatantly violates it with the other, crushing the rights of its citizens: hypocrites! And this after the same Commissioner for Justice and Freedom‘ Franco Frattini I recalled, in response to Green MEP Monica Frassoni, that a 2004 EU directive "recognizes the right of movement within the Union not only for citizens but also for family members, and should include 'the partner who has a registered partnership recognized in the host country as equivalent to marriage.'" In all this, the paradox is that it would allow me, as things stand, to legally marry a woman in Italy, which would, however, make me guilty of bigamy in the Netherlands: madness. As far as we are concerned, we will continue to fight for the recognition of our marriage, or at least for its equivalence with regard to property rights.
In fact, we'd like to move to Italy, but not without some minimal recognition of our union. It would be too costly, especially financially: for example, we'd lose all the pension rights we've built up as a couple, which wouldn't be recognized in Italy. Here it is, before your eyes. falsehood of the free movement of citizens within the Union. 'A lie because this is guaranteed only to those who have a good certificate, being able to marry, even better if contracted in a church, sublime perfection if it is also Catholic, and which attests to their healthy and robust heterosexuality. At least according to the Italian state.
Pierangelo Bucci Rozendaal