Bologna, December 18, 2014 – "The Treviso Civil Court's ruling, which recognized a citizen's right to receive the ashes of his deceased partner, with whom he had lived for a long time, as a direct heir, comes with remarkable timeliness." Flavio Romani, president of Arcigay, commented on the Veneto court's ruling recognizing the legal value of a couple formed between two men. "It's noteworthy," Romani says, "the judges' use of the concept of 'natural family': it is precisely because of this idea, tied to the existence of a stable emotional relationship between the partners comparable to a marital one, that the court ruled in favor of recognition. This is a real slap in the face for those politicians who in recent weeks have been working to promote demands for the 'natural family', understood, however, in the retrograde and discriminatory sense that only includes heterosexual couples. Nature, however, does not discriminate," Romani clarifies, "and those who use the term 'natural' to build fences are engaging in the most artificial and despicable of operations, as well as the most 'unnatural'. Both the elected officials of the Veneto Region, who have supported medieval demands regarding the 'natural family', and the city councilors of Faenza, who only three days ago gave their assent to the now infamous motion against same-sex families, should keep this in mind.".
