There news that at least 16 thousand same-sex couples, according to an analysis by mutui.it, would have requested a mortgage last year only reiterates what we have been saying for years: that in Italy thousands of homosexual couples, well over the 16 thousand detected, are families.
These families, like others, require rights and duties that are supported by a now secularized public opinion, but which are still stubbornly denied by the political parties.
This is why the excellent work of the Milanese government on the rights of non-marital cohabiting couples and on the expansion of the anti-crisis fund, along with the sympathetic statements from Milan's Mayor Pisapia, Majorino, and Boeri, represent the simple, constitutional, acknowledgement that the family has changed and that all citizens deserve equal rights and duties.
Milan's example, which already calls for civilized and European-minded behavior in Turin, Bologna, and Naples, can and must be followed by other municipalities, because Italy deserves to be recognized for what it is, with its many ways of being a family, of living, suffering, and resisting the crisis. The Government has the floor.
Paolo Patanè, national president of Arcigay
