The Zan bill and the renunciations of the Italian parliament – Claudio Rossi Marcelli

On October 27, the parliamentary process of the bill “Measures to prevent and combat discrimination and violence for reasons based on sex, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity and disability” was definitively interrupted. also known as the Zan bill: after approval by the Chamber of Deputies in November 2020, he was blocked in the Senate with 154 votes against and 131 in favor.

The bill intervened on two articles of the penal code to extend the list of hate crimes contained in the Mancino law: the aggravating circumstance already applied to crimes of violence and incitement to hatred based on race, nationality, religion and ethnicity would also be adopted in the case of violence motivated by sex, sexual orientation, gender identity and disability. The bill also included some measures to prevent hate crimes, including the establishment of a day against homotransphobia.

The Zan bill was stopped in the Senate thanks to the procedure that in parliamentary jargon is called “trap”, in which the majority of the classroom votes to block a law even before the examination of the articles begins. At the request of the Lega and the Brothers of Italy (Fdi), and despite the opposition of the supporters of the law, it was voted by secret ballot and by the majority, who on paper thought they had the numbers to pass the law, at least 16 votes among those foreseen.

Lack of willpower
According to the Senate regulation, the text could be resubmitted to the chambers in not earlier than six months, but from a political point of view it is a definitive stop of the law, because it is highly unlikely, if not impossible, that next spring the parties they find again the interest in reopening the question nor the will to reach an agreement in parliament.

On May 20, Franco Grillini, one of the founders of the Italian lgbt + movement, told the Fatto Quotidiano that the first attempt to pass a law against homotransphobia in Italy dates back to 1993, on the occasion of the discussion of the Mancino law: “When the then Minister of the Interior of the Ciampi government, Nicola Mancino, reformed the Royal law, we tried to introduce the issue of gender identity and sexual orientation within the new law. And we were told that we were right, but that it was not possible in the first draft otherwise the law would not pass. Therefore, it was not possible to add gender identity and orientation to ethnic-religious racial and national motivations ”.

Since then there have been at least six other attempts: in 1999, with the bill signed by Paolo Palma (Ulivo); in 2000, on the occasion of the institution of the Day of Remembrance for the victims of the Holocaust, where the request of the LGBT + associations to include homosexuals among the victims was not accepted; in 2002 and 2006, both times on the initiative of Grillini when he was a member of the Chamber with the Left Democrats; in 2009, when a bill against homotransphobia of which Paola Concia of the Democratic Party (Pd) was the rapporteur was stopped by the vote against the center-right, the Union of the center and Senator Paola Binetti of the Pd; and finally the attempt with the bill presented by Ivan Scalfarotto (Pd), which after the green light to the chamber landed in the Senate in April 2014 without ever reaching approval.

The sinking of the Zan bill is therefore only the latest in a very long series of unsuccessful attempts, which in many cases seem to resemble each other even in the exchange of accusations the following day: the center-right blames the opponents for not having wanted to find a compromise while the center-left accuses him of wanting to stop the law. And, especially for the cases of more recent years, the way in which the parliamentary debate on homotransphobia has been heavily influenced by questions of political balance extraneous to the content of the laws is also similar.

After the stop to the bill, which in the classroom was greeted by applause from the stands of the center-right, the game of accusations opened between the political parties: Lega and Fratelli d’Italia reproach the secretary of the Democratic Party Enrico Letta for not having tried a dialogue, while the center-left is pointing the finger at the senators of Italia Viva, suspected of having taken advantage of the secret vote to put the Democratic Party in difficulty.

Italy therefore continues to be the only Western European country that does not provide any aggravating circumstances for hate crimes against homosexuals and trans people. The political debate of recent months, which in addition to parliament and public opinion has also involved Vatican diplomacy, has been centered on the fear that the law would damage freedom of expression.

In reality, the importance of this rule was not linked to what it would have forbidden but to what it would have affirmed: the number of people punished for hate crimes is very low, and in any case the Italian judges who want to apply an aggravating circumstance on violence homotransphobic have the generic legal definition of “violence for futile reasons”. But this law would have stated that homosexuality and transsexuality, as well as gender and disability, are human characteristics with the same dignity as all others, and therefore deserve the same protection. More than a criminal law instrument, the Zan law would have been a formidable declaration of equality.

The day after the vote in the Senate, the secretary of the Democratic Party Enrico Letta told Radio Immagina that his party is ready to support the law against homotransphobia through a popular initiative. According to a survey Demos & PI conducted last July, 62 percent of Italians support the approval of the Zan bill: not surprisingly, on the evening of October 28th thousands of people took to the streets in Rome and Milan to protest against the sinking of the bill. Perhaps the voters would be able to break the deadlock in which parliament has been for almost thirty years.