Cast your eyes back to an Italy of the nineteen sixties, the swinging age and the time of sexual liberation in so many countries especially in the UK and the US of A, and you’ll find a nation still entrenched in religious dogma and old-fashioned prejudice. At that time there was no Italian State law to allow divorce; abortion was a crime and same sex relationships were, if not quite anti-Wildean in their anathematic intolerance, pretty close to it…

Yet one must not consider Italy in the last century as an intolerant society. While (often innocent) victims were being regularly hanged in the UK, Tuscany had long since abolished the death penalty. The Grand Duchy of Tuscany, on November 30th 1786, under the reign of Peter Leopold Habsburg Lorraine, for the first time in the world, stopped torture and capital punishment with a formal act.

Under a united Italy the death penalty was abolished in 1889. That is, indeed, some aspect of civilization and freedom: just compare the UK where the last woman hanged was Ruth Ellis in 1955 and the last man, Peter Anthony Allen, in 1964.

However, Italy lagged behind in laws regulating sexual  matters and equality of women. The ‘crime of honour’ (if murdering a female partner could ever be described as an honourable thing…) was only eradicated from the statue book in 1981. Since that year there has been no leniency shown for murdering a female partner. Yet the law cannot automatically change men’s attitudes. In 2018, for example no less than 94 women were bludgeoned to death by their jealous male partners who felt that that their own ‘honour’ in society and that of their family would have gone for ever. (One recent and particularly horrific case involved setting alight to the car where ‘his’ woman and her two children were confined.)

On 1 December 1970, divorce was introduced into the Italian legal system. Before that time annulment of marriage was a lengthy and costly procedure involving the tribunal of the Vatican City in the ‘sacra rota’.

In 1978 law no, 194 established rules for the social protection of maternity and the “voluntary interruption of pregnancy”, and, for the first time, decriminalized and regulated the modalities of access to the abortion.

Just over two years ago, in 2016, a new law called ‘legge Cirinnà’ after the female politician who encouraged its establishment, came into effect.  The law regulates the civil union between persons of the same sex: gay couples, qualified as “specific social formations”, were able for the first time in Italian history to take advantage of a new legal institution of public law called civil union. In this regard, reference is made to article two of the constitution which deals with the equality of citizens without distinction of sex, and article three, on equal social dignity of citizens without distinction of sex.

It was with great happiness, therefore, that we attended the civil union of two of our oldest friends in Italy, Giovanni and Andrea. The ceremony took place in the Pretorian palace of Vicopisano, part of the magnificent fortress designed by Brunelleschi – he of the dome of Florence cathedral – and was presided over by the mayor of the district.

(For more on the fortress see my post at https://longoio.wordpress.com/2013/05/17/vicopisano-and-brunelleschis-military-architect).

The ceremony was very well attended. As a professor, local historian and guardian of the fortress and of the temple of Minerva (for this arcane temple see my post at https://longoio.wordpress.com/2014/02/08/a-mysterious-temple/), Giovanni is loved and respected by a wide section of Pisan society. What was also wonderful was the fact that everyone who attended accepted the new law as if it had always been in place. There was real jubilation that the love (‘that once dared not speak its name’) between them (they’d known each for over 25 years) had finally been legally recognised by the Italian state.

After the ceremony there was a reception in the palace which houses an interesting museum.

From thence we went to a fine local restaurant (Chez Mes Amis at San Giovanni della Vena) for a truly gargantuan spread….

(PS. It’s good to know that Italy is moving forwards fast. Meanwhile in those islands north of Calais a nation is turning its back on the future in search of a long lost dream of ‘taking back’ its sovereignty. I do not doubt for a minute that if another lie-ridden referendum were held in that part of the world on capital punishment the results would be to bring back hanging. )