THE TRUMAN SHOW OF SAME-SEX FAMILY. RIGHT TO FILIATION V. BEST INTEREST OF THE CHILD

This study offers a brief excursus on the adoption in Italy, focusing on the legislative choice (as ruled by the “Civil Partnership Act”)1 not to grant the stepchild adoption (SCA) to the partners of the registered partnerships, called unioni civili. When the Act was discussed by the Parliament, there was an hard debate on filiation in same-sex couple: the right to be a couple for same-sex partners has been less problematic than providing for a specific right to parenthood. On such issue was not reached a majority’s consent, so, in order to save the goal of unioni civili, the provisions on filiation and adoption for same sex couples had been set aside. In the absence of scientific studies and evidences on the consequences for a child to live with same-sex parents and in front of a fragmented civil society’s feeling on such issue, the legislative has decided to go ahead. Behind such option there is probably the fear that the child can be hurt or seriously affected in her/his personal/phycological and sexual identity, if adopted or grown up in a by an homo-parental family. In this regard, the analysis also investigates the judiciary answer to the stepchild adoption’s requests in same-sex parent families, in specific cases such as the ones of individuals, who had got married in another State or had simply opted for artificial insemination (mainly female couples) or surrogacy (mainly male ones). The study considers if: - in major western legal systems where the step-child adoption is generally recognized by the legislation, homo-sexual civil unions or marriage’s partners are entitled to a fundamental right to become parents, that implies a right to filiation in the interest of the adopting parent; - where the stepchild adoption has been recognised only by courts, it has been based on the continuity of the affective relationship and the best interest of the adopted child, even in cases of surrogacy and artificial insemination and sometimes even when no one of the commissioning partner is the biological parent. The consequences of these two different approaches in terms of legal reasoning, recognition of new rights, new family bonds and respective obligations between family members will also be investigated.