Italy’s deputy premier Salvini stirs national debate as mother claims family has been “overwhelmed by hatred”.
A councillor in the north Italian city of Padua has sparked a gender debate in Italy after announcing the birth of her baby son by attaching rainbow ribbons to her office door.
In Italy it is traditional to announce the birth of babies by affixing fiocchi (bows) to the door of the parents’ home or workplace: a blue fiocco for a boy, pink for a girl.
Margherita Colonnello, Padua city councillor for social welfare and a member of the centre-left Partito Democratico (PD) party, broke with tradition and chose to welcome her newborn son with rainbows instead of a blue bow.
Colonnello, 33, had announced the decision in May at the end of the Pride parade in Padua.
“When you come into the world, I won’t give you a pink or blue ribbon, but a rainbow one, because all colours are beautiful. And then you decide” – Colonnello said – I’ll make sure to help you to have courage, because if you have it, you will see the world not in black and white, but in the thousand shades of beauty.”
At the time, the speech was attacked by right-wing politicians who distorted Colonnello’s words, claiming that the councillor had said she would let her child choose whether to be a boy or a girl.
Two weeks ago, Colonnello and her husband Cosimo Cacciavillani welcomed the birth of their first child, Aronne.
Announcing the news on 14 August, Colonnello said: “It’s the name of my great-great-grandfather, who participated in the anti-fascist barricades of the Oltretorrente in Parma”.
On Monday, within hours of the rainbow ribbons appearing outside her office in Palazzo Moroni, local representatives of the right-wing Lega party went on the attack.
Political reaction
“The child was transformed, as soon as he was born, into an ideological manifesto,” Lega city councillor Eleonora Mosco said, an accusation echoed by Lega MP Rossano Sasso who accused Colonnello of “exploiting” her newborn son “to continue her gender propaganda”.
Italy’s deputy premier and Lega leader Matteo Salvini stirred the debate with an Instagram post: “Congratulations and best wishes to mamma, papà and baby, but was all this really necessary?”
Lega deputy secretary General Roberto Vannacci charged: “This is yet another example of the damage inflicted on the most fragile minds by an unhealthy ideology, which clashes with nature and denies reality. And the main victim, in this case, is a poor innocent child.”
Senator Mariastella Gelmini of the centre-right Noi Moderati, commented: “At birth, we are male or female. Period. It’s biology that decides, and denying it is like claiming the earth is flat. No one wants to question the rights of the LGBT community, but positions like this risk representing an extremist drift that could have the opposite effect.”
Colonello responds
“The keyboard warriors have overwhelmed us with hatred” – Colonnello wrote on social media, in response to the controversy – “Our son is not yet two weeks old. We never imagined we would have to spend this precious time immersed in a national controversy about our family.”
“We didn’t ask him to decide whether to be a boy or a girl” – she said – “We promised him, in a society still too fearful, that we will always be by his side, whatever he decides for his life and whoever he decides to be.”
She concluded by saying that she hopes that “those who set themselves up as ‘defenders of the family’ will respect our peace of mind during these intense and beautiful days. Days we would like to spend only in the company of our son, without having to defend ourselves from attacks from the right.”
Support
Colonnello received support from Padua’s education councillor Cristina Piva (PD), who believes “children must always be protected, especially from right-wing exploitation”.
MEP Alessandro Zan (PD) stated: “Aronne’s wonderful family is suffering a shameful attack, fuelled by the right-wing narrative of hate. How sad, they won’t even stop when faced with a new life.”
Photo TgPadova – Telenuovo
