Gay Couple Assaulted by Gang of Teens in Milan
The couple, who were holding hands while walking home, were attacked by teens who beat them and shouted anti-gay slurs at them.
A gay couple claims they were attacked, beaten, and had anti-gay slurs hurled at them by a gang of youths while walking in Milan, reports Sardinian newspaper L’Unione Sarda.
The couple, Ivano and Alfredo, were walking in Milan’s Barona neighborhood on December 21 when five youths accosted them for holding hands while walking home just before midnight.
The youths shouted anti-gay insults at the couple, including “You are against God and nature.”
Ivano, a 45-year-old nurse, later wrote on social media, “My partner and I were attacked because of homophobia … I got punched in the head.”
Luca Paladini, regional councilor of Lombardy for Patto Civico and a friend of the couple, recounted the ordeal on social media, claiming that Ivano was admitted to the San Paolo hospital after the attack “due to a punch he received, which contributed to a worrying rise in blood pressure.” He was eventually released and allowed to go home.
“Ivano will file a [police] complaint against unknown people,” Paladini wrote.
“We must denounce an increasingly violent and discriminatory climate against people from the LGBT community. A climate that someone feeds daily, and, on the contrary, is not unknown,” he added, appearing to allude to Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, a right-wing populist who has employed anti-LGBTQ rhetoric to appeal to socially conservative voters.
Under Meloni’s government, Italy — which already banned surrogacy domestically — passed a law prohibiting Italians from attempting to obtain a baby via surrogacy abroad, further cutting off avenues for infertile straight couples and, more importantly, male same-sex couples from becoming parents.
Meloni and her fellow Brothers of Italy party members have also railed against “gender ideology” and the “LGBT lobby,” employing right-wing tropes that same-sex couples who adopt children are “buying” children and will either abuse or “groom” them.
Meloni — a single mother — has stated that children should only be raised in two-parent, heterosexual households.
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