Italian Cabinet Member Connects Gay Adoption to Sex Trafficking of Minors

Carlo Giovanardi

•  By Kilian Melloy-

    An Italian politician has claimed that there is a link between same-parent adoption and "the buying and selling of children." Religious site Catholic News Agency reported Sept. 21 that Carlo Giovanardi, Italy’s Secretary of State for Family Policy, made the claims during an interview. Among other assertions, Giovanardi said that child trafficking in America had skyrocketed in the wake of same-sex adoption rights in some states. Giovanardi made the same claim about Brazil. The article did not say whether Giovanardi offered any supporting documentation for his assertions. Added Giovanardi, "It is something that at least this government will never accept and I want to denounce it from here." The politician’s attack on same-sex families continued with a repetition of the Catholic church’s view that gay and lesbian parents inflict harm on their offspring simply by being two parents of the same gender. "To impose two parents of the same sex on a child is to subject that child to psychological violence," said Giovanardi, going on to add that "A child has the right to grow up [in a home where] a paternal and maternal figure complement each other and guarantee the child balanced development."

Though anti-gay activists frequently claim that children being brought up in same-sex households are deprived of essential role models, reputable studies looking at how children of same-sex parents have demonstrated that children growing up with two attentive, engaged parents of the same sex do just as well as their peers from mixed-gender homes. In some respects, the research indicates, such children may even do better.

Anti-gay advocates point to a different set of studies to justify claims that children need parents of both genders. However, the studies that anti-gay advocates cite are of single-parent households--not of two-parent homes in which the parents are both men or both women.

The remarks made by Giovanardi are not the first controversial comments he has made. In 2004, responding to criticisms aimed at E. U. Commissioner Rocco Buttiglione, Giovanardi--then the Minister of Parliamentary Affairs--accused Buttiglione’s critics of being like the Taliban. Buttiglione had stated publicly that to be gay was a "sin," reported Time.com on Oct. 24, 2004, and added that marriage functioned chiefly to provide women "the right to have children and the protection of a man."

Giovanardi framed the ensuing flap in terms of religious liberty, declaring, "We haven’t seen an attack against religious freedom like this since the end of World War II. It’s a new witch hunt."

In 2008, however, Giovanardi took aim at free speech as practiced by advocates of decriminalizing drugs. "We say enough to the drug culture," Giovanardi said in an interview in May of that year, according to a Wikipedia article. "And in order to do that we want to introduce a rule preventing propaganda, even indirect, to all drugs, including so-called ’light drugs.’ "

In 2006, Giovanardi attacked the Netherlands for a law allowing physicians to allow terminally ill children to die if there was no possibility that their condition would improve. Calling the change in the law "Nazi legislation," Giovanardi claimed that allowing children who would not survive their illnesses to die was a form of "eugenics," and warned that the law could be expanded to include other populations. "We could just as easily apply this to senior citizens," he said at the time, according to a March 20, 2006, article at anti-gay religious website LifeSiteNews.com.


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