Gay rights in Italy

I write to you on behalf of the Associazione Radicale Certi Diritti, a LGBTE (E stands for hEtersosexual) Association committed to enhance LGBT Rights, trans rights and sexual rights (see attached file for more information) in Italy.

In the past years, we have conducted an important Same Sex Marriage campaign, called "Affermazione Civile" (Civil Affirmation)
Together with Avvocatura per i Diritti LGBT - Rete Lenford (the association of Italian lawyers for LGBT rights) we contacted and helped a number of couples to ask their City Councils to put up their banns and then to formally oppose the subsequent refusal.

Affermazione Civile has led to sentence 138/2010 of the Italian Constitutional Court that has increased the opportunity to move on to other strategic litigations. To do so we also decided to better consolidate our connection with ILGA Europe.
Today, especially after the very recent sentence of French Court on Same Sex Marriage, it has become really important to involve into “Affermazione Civile” also the couples living abroad and that are discriminated against by Italy (because their marriage/civil union/ partnership is not recognized in Italy).
Although it would be preferable that at least one of the two members of the couple was Italian, it is not strictly necessary since every European citizen may be discriminated against by Italy. In general, we could refer also to heterosexual couples, as they may be limited in their freedom of movement as well.

For these reasons, we are asking you for any help to get in contact with couples living in your country and that are discriminated against by the Italian government because of their sexual orientation or because they are not married.
Any couple willing to contact us can write directly to affermazionecivile@certidiritti.it

We also would like to check with you the option to organize a meeting in Rome during the Europride week (1-12 June 2011). This meeting could be an important occasion for the representatives of all the associations that share our purposes to get in touch and exchange ideas about future strategies and events to be planned. Since we are sure that many of you are interested in the Europride, please let us know who is willing to attend the event organized in Rome and, as a consequence, share the opportunity to join our meeting.

If you want to help us, some other ideas could be:
1) Report of our campaign in your newsletter
2) Report of our campaign in the internet site
3) Help us translate this letter in your language, so we could publish it on our internet site too (www.certidiritti.it and www.affermazionecivile.it)
4) Help us reach heterosexual couples living under civil union / civil partnership (if they are discriminated against by Italy)
5) Any other support you may want to give to us
For any further information, do not hesitate to ask Gian Mario Felicetti,
affermazionecivile@certidiritti.it

We look forward to hearing from you.
Gian Mario Felicetti
www.certidiritti.it
+39-329-9045945