Far from being simply a parade of LGBT+ pride, at best a time of sharing with cities and civil society, the “Pride” events held on the last weekend in June in countless cities end up becoming the stage for politics, which is increasingly preoccupied with laboriously demonstrating its “non-homotransphobia,” indeed, its prone and supine dependence on the “non-binary” agenda, whatever that means.
This was seen in Milan, where Mayor Giuseppe Sala took advantage of the speakers’ platform to implement a quid pro quo exchange with the LGBT+ community, Milanese and beyond. Sala announced that he had resumed in the Milanese municipality, it is unclear on the basis of what change in the existing situation, the registration of children born in Italy to homosexual couples, and asked in return for LGBT+ support for his own work and for his council.
This was also seen, at a completely different latitude, in Helsinki, Finland, where Prime Minister Sanna Marin, 36, a woman from the Social Democratic Party, also brought to motivation the personal, not to say personalistic, fact that she grew up in a “rainbow family”, and announced that in the fall, the Finnish legislation on transgender people will be updated.
As always, given the sensitivity of the subject matter, some aspects of the regulations can be thorny. Finland is unanimously considered an “LGBT+-friendly“ country. From 2002 to 2017, Helsinki allowed same-sex civil unions, with rights identical to those of married couples with the exception of child adoption and a common surname. In 2014, parliament also approved same-sex “marriage” and joint adoption by same-sex couples, and the law came into effect in 2017. Since 2007, couples consisting of two women have had access to IVF, and stepchild adoption became possible in 2009.
Transgender persons can take advantage of registering their chosen sex on their identity documents, and soon it will even be possible to indicate the hypothetical “neutral” gender, but before they can apply for legal gender recognition they must first have been sterilized or otherwise found to be infertile. This is the first of the conditions that will be changed by the new legislation, once passed.
The method of registering maternity and paternity in the Population Detection System will also have to be changed, and separate files for the two forms of parenthood will have to be opened, with the possibility of moving citizens from one to the other in case of legal sex change.
Another issue on the negotiating table, the most controversial one, which sees some opposition especially within the Center Party, is that of sex change for boys and girls as young as 15 years old, advocated by some transgender activist groups, who argue that “[…] children are aware of their gender from an early age.”
The discussion, Minister Marin pointed out, will kick off in the fall session of parliament, which begins on September 6.