We are the Stories, two dads: “Our children without rights”

Stories are invisible points that unite us. The column is born today “We are the stories”. Send yours here: +39 3472156843, via Whatsapp.

May 15, International Day of Families. How many meanings does the word family have? For Giuseppe, Bevan, Tui and Gabriel family are their four names, written next to each other on a drawing brought home from school by their two children. A small and natural gesture that carries a world with it. The same that in some countries, including Italy, is not yet legally and socially accepted in its entirety.

Giuseppe and Bevan arrived in London from two different parallels: Italy, precisely Sardinia for the first and New Zealand for the second. Miles away for the same goal: to stop feeling different because homosexual. In London they succeeded and that’s where they met. It was 1999 and for ten years Giuseppe and Bevan imagined themselves only as friends. “Then we fell in love. As if at any moment we had discovered each other with new eyes »says Giuseppe on the phone from London. «And immediately one thing we had in common was the strong sense and desire for family, children. We talked about it with the awareness of someone who has a dream and knows it won’t be easy to make it come true “.

Before succeeding, Giuseppe and Bevan thought about adoption, “very difficult for same-sex couples”, they imagined coparenting with a friend and finally met a couple of fathers who had just returned from the United States. There, thanks to gestation for others, they became parents. “So we did the same thing, going to California where in 2014 we met Dayna, the special woman who carried our children in her womb.” By law, it must be a woman who has a family that can support her during her pregnancy.

Two years after their meeting, Dayna was pregnant with Gabriel and Tui. “On the day of the birth, we were there with Dayna’s mother in the operating room. While in the room waiting for us was my mother who is a nurse, ready to assist Dayna and the little ones ». So Giuseppe and Bevan became dad and daddy. Each biologically linked to one of the twins, both of whom are legally recognized as parents of both of their children in both the United States and England. But not in Italy. “In Italy our children are not legally ours. Gabriel can be biologically recognized as my son and Tui as Bevan’s daughter. Or both of them as children of mine since they have my surname as first ».

In practice it means «if we decide to live in Italy, to buy a house, to send the children to school, to take advantage of public health, we will have to face bureaucratic issues to prove that we are the parents of our children. But a civil society does not go forward with common sense, rights are needed ». The same for which today Giuseppe and Bevan, together with the lawyer Cathy La Torre, they have started a judicial process that will bring them before a judge. “The first to pay for all this are the children.” What country is it that does not protect its future?

You may also like