"Indefectibility of Gender Difference:" Italy's High Court Annuls Foreign Homosexual "Marriages"

L'osservatore Romano, Italian daily edition

October 28, 2015

The Council of State on marriages between homosexuals

ROME, 27. A decision of the [Italian] Council of State annulled the City of Rome's recognition of marriages between homosexuals with licenses issued abroad. Marriage between homosexuals - say the judges of the Council of State - lack an essential requirement for equal recognition in Italian jurisprudence, namely "the condition of the indefectibility of gender difference between those to marry" according to the text of the decision.

Palazzo Spada seat of the High Court
The Council of State

The judgment was delivered on October 8, but only now hit the press. At issue, the highest body of judicial administration of the nation confirmed the decision of first instance: starting from the fact that, pursuant of international law, "the conditions of legality of marriage" are those governed "by the national law of each betrothed ", it is clearly stating that "the first condition for the validity and efficacy" for Italy is "the difference in sex." Otherwise analyzing what are the powers and duties of civil officials to whom the request to register weddings abroad may come, the administrative judges recalled that the Presidential Decree 396/2000 (Regulations for the revision and simplification of the civil order ) requires them to accertain the "elements" and the "content" for the act to be valid. Which requirement is lacking in this case, because the same law requires a "declaration of the spouses to want to take each other respectively as husband and wife."

Consequently: every gay "marriage" celebrated abroad and recorded in Italy will be definitively canceled. Without any possibility of appeal. Avennire

This year the mayors of several Italian cities, including Rome and Milan, had transcribed in their municipal registers as married couples homosexual couples who had married abroad.

Interior Minister, Angelino Alfano declared this inadmissible. Homosexual couples and the Roman mayor Ignazio Marino, have submitted a counter-action suit. The Eponymous Flower