ROME, March 20, 2014 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A municipality of Rome has proposed to ban the observance of Father’s Day in Ugo Bartolomei kindergarten in cases where a child might come from a lesbian same-sex family. The decision by Rome’s Municipality II has raised the ire of parents, a large group of whom launched a complaint at city hall.
The municipal commissioner has agreed, saying, “I feel I share the disappointment of these families.” Councillor Gloria Pasquali of the municipal education policies office, said, “It is not a matter of despising someone, but I do not think it is correct to change the schedule of school activities.” She added that Fathers’ Day could be considered educational “for those with no dad.”
The school had met with a city psychologist and decided to change the name of Father’s Day to “name the two parties not as parental figures, but the family as a whole,” or to arrange a “festival for spring.” Finally they took the decision to keep Mother’s Day but to organize a more “generic” family holiday for March 19th. Father’s Day is popular in Italy since it coincides, on March 19th, with the feast of St. Joseph, who is widely honoured in Italian society as a model of fatherhood.
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In their complaint, the parents said “that it is a strange kind of political correctness and tolerance in which, not to ‘discriminate’ against a child, you end up discriminating against 30, depriving them of a time to which they are entitled.”
“What kind of pedagogy is brought forward which is based on the concealment of a natural principle, and a deep and wonderful truth, such as that every child is born of love and union of a mom and a dad.”
Giuseppina La Delfa, president of Rainbow Families, a mother of two children who lives with a same-sex partner, told Corriere della Sera, “We homosexual parents are mothers or fathers and we want no foreclosure on celebrating dads and moms, grandmothers and grandfathers. Indeed, we are in favor.” But La Delfa added that a “problem arises when a teacher is reciting the poem: ‘How beautiful is my dad’ to a child who has two moms.”
Emma Ciccarelli, president of the Forum of the Family Associations of Lazio, said, “What is important to us is not the controversy … but the welfare of the child in question. How may other children live in Italy without having both their parents? I think of the many orphaned children or children of separated parents.”
“And after that, what? Do we also delete Mother’s Day for all the reverse cases?”