One step up and two steps back? The Italian debate on secularization,heteronormativity and LGBTQ citizenship

Abstract

The aim of this article is to furnish insights of the Italian public debate on the recognition of LGBTQ rights, which can be understood as an interesting case study of the complex relationship between (multi)secularisation processes and re/definition of citizenship models. More specifically, the article analyses two political events related to this debate that took place in Rome in June 2015. The first is the Family Day demonstration, promoted by conservative Catholic groups; the second is the LGBTQ Pride parade, promoted by various gay, lesbian and transsexual/gender associations. We analyse the official statements issued by the two organising committees of the demonstrations, adopting the framework and methods of the Critical Discourse Analysis. Above and beyond an evident political conflict between the two discourses, we try to shed light on their mutual construction on the basis of what we call ‘naturalization’ and ‘universalization’ processes.

Introduction

Lately, a large part of the public debate in Italy has focused on issues relating to gender equality, LGBTQ rights, and, more broadly, the relationship between the processes of secularisation and the definition of contemporary citizenship. More specifically, since 2013 three bills have been presented in parliament with the aim of introducing: the recognition of partnerships and marriages for same-sex couples (the Cirinnà Bill, 2013); ¹ educational programmes on gender relations in public schools (the Fedeli Bill, 2014); inclusion of the crime of homophobia in the law – the Scalfarotto Bill, 2013 (Ozzano and Giorgi, 2015).

The public discussion of these proposals generated two particularly significant discourses that engaged in a harsh political debate. On the one hand the neo-conservative Catholic movement opposed all three of the law proposals, invoking defence of the ‘natural family’; on the other, the LGBTQ movements claimed full civil, social and sexual citizenship for non-heterosexual couples.

In this article, we analyse two public and political events that took place in Rome – both in June 2015 – concerning the granting of sexual rights to LGBTQ people and its relationship with sexual citizenship and referring to the critical debate on the secular paradigm and the post-secular turn (Braidotti, 2008). The first is the so-called Family Day, a demonstration promoted by conservative Catholic groups; the second is the Rome LGBTQ Pride parade, called ‘Human Pride’, promoted by several Italian LGBTQ associations and groups. The Family Day had a twofold purpose: to safeguard heterosexual marriage as the only legitimate and ‘natural’ reproductive relationship, and to counter the institutionalisation of gender education programs in public schools – synthesized in the threatening expression Gender Ideology (Garbagnoli, 2014; Robinson, 2008), which evokes a manipulative scenario. The Human LGBTQ Pride parade put forward a threefold claim: ‘pride’ as public visibility of LGBTQ identity; the granting of civil and social rights to LGBTQ people – reframed as human rights (Polikoff, 1993; Seidman, 2001); and the refusal of the ‘Gender Ideology’ (by defending the laicity of public schools).

In order to investigate these events, we analyse the official statements issued by the two organising committees (press releases and political manifestos) utilizing the general framework of Critical Discourse Analysis (Fairclough, 2001; van Dijk, 2001).

In the following sections, we first outline our conceptual framework, which is principally related to the secularisation process and the rise of the modern paradigm of citizenship, analysed from a feminist perspective (Scott, 2009; Richardson, 2017). We then present the context and the methodology of our analysis. In the empirical part of the article, we devote a section to each of the above-mentioned events, focusing on the discursive strategies of the two organizing committees. Finally, we compare the two discourses in order to illustrate their complex, intertwined relation. Above and beyond an apparent political conflict, we identify a common frame based on what we define as ‘naturalization’ and ‘universalization’ processes, with major consequences for the public and political debate in terms of (sexual) citizenship (Brandzel, 2005) and secularisation.

Sexual/intimate citizenship, secularisation and feminist perspectives

The Italian political and public debate on the sexual rights of LGBTQ people, and the introduction of gender education programmes in schools, is closely related to the concept of sexual (Richardson, 2000, 2017) and intimate (Plummer, 2003) citizenship. The claims of LGBTQ movement(s) and the statements of neo-conservative and Catholic groups point out the tensions between two opposite perspectives referring back to three interconnected elements which historically founded (Western) modern society: the concept of citizenship; the processes of secularisation; and the paradigm of scientific knowledge (Bruce, 2002). To understand the complexity of the contemporary debate on these interrelated issues, our study seeks to integrate different frameworks of feminist scholarship – critical sociology of law; sociology of religion; and political theory – which address the epistemic construction of law, rights, (sexual) citizenship and secularisation processes.

According to feminist perspectives, Modernity – the ‘master narrative’ of contemporary, secularized societies (Alcoff and Potter, 1993) – shapes the liberal, universal subject of law around man (white, European, owner and heteronormative), which is also the unique subject and object of (positivist) science (Butler, 2004; Scott, 2009). This paradigm of scientific knowledge is supposed to understand reality in an objective way and thus substitutes the ‘religious truth’ with that of science. Objectivity itself becomes not only possible, but also the only source of legitimation and authority of discursive orders (Foucault, 1970). In this positivist frame, nature is conceptualized as the universal and moral principle to which human laws and behaviours must adhere, becoming in this way a normative and performative device that universalizes the precondition of human being and then of humanity itself (Pollo, 2008).

Moreover, according to Braidotti (2008) and Scott (2009), this positivist turn of Western cultures, which constitutes one of the fundamental components in the construction of the subject of law, is based on ontological dichotomies, such as nature/culture, equality/difference, public/private – reproducing the wider theoretical opposition between secular and religious. This dichotomous construction of reality that characterises the secularisation process and constitutes the ‘Modern’ narrative is based in its turn on the presumption that: i) the religious institutions are separate from the political and normative systems; ii) religion is a matter of private conscience (private belief system) and political citizenship pertains to the public domain; iii) God is substituted by nature; iv) a biological/scientific assumption founds the division between masculinity and femininity and between the public and private spheres (Braidotti, 2008; Scott, 2009). In feminist critical thinking, these dichotomies are not neutral: on the contrary, they describe and give form to a hierarchical set of gendered relationships, where the first term, typically male-related, give political and scientific legitimacy to the oppression of the latter (women and all the ‘minorities’ which are not compatible with the paradigmatic citizen: male, white, owner, educated, heterosexual).

As different scholars (Braidotti, 2008; Scott, 2009) have pointed out, the renewed importance of religion in the contemporary public debate and the coexistence of different interpretations of the secularisation process highlight the need to rethink this ‘master narrative’ of Western modern democracies, particularly in relation to the beliefs – universality and humanism – and the legal/political basis of citizenship. Moreover, the introduction of critical, gendered and LGBTQ-oriented perspectives on these issues further questions the ‘religious vs. secular’ dichotomy, addressing the definition of subjectivity, citizenship and public sphere in a more complex way. Indeed, according to Asad (1993) and Scott (2009), these perspectives contribute to develop a reinterpretation of the process of secularisation that overcomes its monolithic idealisation. Firstly, they underline the need to recognize the multiplicity of the secularization processes that took place in the different societies. Secondly, claims for women’s emancipation and agency, gender equality and access to ‘minorities’ rights have questioned the ontology of the universal citizenship model from a situated and embodied perspective (Giorgi, 2015).

The feminist movements and approaches (Braidotti, 2008) have deconstructed this model of citizenship from two perspectives: one based on equality and the other based on differences. In the feminist debate, this ambivalence has been polarised on the question of whether or not women and LGBTQ subjectivities could strategically use the same system of law that historically excluded them from citizenship rights (Pitch, 1983). Indeed, the risk of being neutralised and homologated has divided the Italian feminist movement in terms of claims for State rights’ recognition or self-determination (Pitch, 1983).

This growth of complexity is equally apparent when it comes to the issue of acknowledgement of sexual and citizenship rights. Indeed, the claims of sexual rights and the recognition of LGBTQ identities highlight that the concept of citizenship does not have a universal validity and challenges the idea of standard equality. On the contrary, it creates inclusion and exclusion processes based on the characteristics of the subject-citizen.

As introduced by Pateman (1988) and reclaimed by several authors in debates on LGBTQ rights, citizenship and marriage (Brandzel, 2005; Josephson, 2005), ‘the sexual contract is fundamental to ideas of citizenship, [in particular] the significance of a married heterosexual context as the norm for full citizen status’ (Richardson, 2017: 210). As we will see in the following paragraphs, the recognition of same-sex partnerships and/or marriage has been much debated in the Italian public sphere (as in other countries such as France and Slovenia), for several interconnected legal and symbolic reasons. The first reason concerns an equality issue, insofar as marriage is the only way to access social and economic rights concerning couple relationships and parenthood. The second refers to a symbolic sphere: the recognition of the LGBTQ intimate realm in the public space (Josephson, 2005). The symbolic reason is the most controversial aspect of the LGBTQ debate: on the one hand, it is considered a challenge to the basis of the heteronormative order because it questions gender norms and sexuality (Josephson, 2005; Lehr, 2003 in Kuhar, 2014); on the other, it is seen as the reproduction of the heteronormative model named ‘homonormativity’ (Duggan, 2003). This debate therefore questions the way in which a society, its public institutions and specific groups, defines the relation between the universal access to, and the recognition of, citizenship rights.

Research context and methodology

The Italian polarization of the public debate on sexual/intimate citizenship and school education is well represented in two different public events: the first is the demonstration known as the Family Day, promoted by neo-conservatives and Catholic groups that took place in Rome on 20 June 2015; the second is the Rome LGBTQ Pride, ² held on 13 June 2015 in the same city. ³

These demonstrations had significant importance in the political discourse because they constituted opposite claims and had different genealogies. Prior to 2015, the Family Day had taken place on a national scale only once, in 2007, to protest against a draft law on recognition of the partnerships of same-sex couples (the Bindi-Pollastrini Bill, 2007). ⁴ The promoters of the 2007 Family Day made explicit reference to Catholic movements and values, but in the 2015 event, none of the previous organisations was present in the organizing committee.

The LGBTQ Pride has a longer tradition and continuity. In fact, the Pride parade has been organised yearly since 1994 in collaboration with the international LGBTQ movement. Moreover, in 2013, the Italian Pride parades, which had taken place in a number of different cities in Italy, converged into a single brand called ONDA Pride (Wave Pride: a wave being the symbol of the national dimension that connects the several parades in the various cities).

The Family Day’s organising Committee, called ‘Difendiamo i nostri figli’ (Defending Our Children) ⁵ was formed on June 2, 2015, and it consists of members of various Catholic organisations sharing the same conservative views on the so-called ‘sensitive ethical issues’, such as abortion, euthanasia, and medically assisted procreation. To be noted is that the eleven members of the organising committee use to underline their professionalism – for example, as neuro-psychiatrists, lawyers, teachers and journalists or as members of Catholic organisations – during public events. The official website of the committee, instead, lists its members by name, but does not include the organisations that they represent. Therefore, it is difficult to determine if they are representing their organisation or only themselves. ⁶

The Pride’s organising committee is composed of different institutional associations, such as ARCIGAY and ARCILESBICA (the two main Italian gay and lesbian associations), ⁷ and informal LGBTQ groups or collectives active in the cities where Pride parades take place.

Our analysis focuses specifically on the demonstration that took place in Rome on June 13, 2015 – the Capital Pride parade. From a methodological point of view, we selected this parade for two reasons: i) because of its national importance in the Italian context and in political, media and symbolic terms; ii) in order to ensure comparison with the Family Day event in terms of the reference area (Rome).

In order to conduct our analytical work on the texts, we adopted the Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) method, which underlines the importance of the context (van Dijk, 2001: 356) that is constituted by: the setting (time, place); ongoing actions (including discourse and discourse genres); participants in various communicative, social, or institutional roles; as well as their goals, knowledge, opinions, attitudes, and ideologies.

In keeping with the CDA perspective, our analysis concentrates on the official statements drawn up by the two organising committees with the aim of involving people in the demonstrations and enhancing their claims in the public and political arenas. More specifically, we focus on three press releases issued by the Family Day promoters, dated June 8, 18 and 30, 2015, which can be considered as the political manifesto of the demonstration. Concerning the LGBTQ Pride, we analyse two manifestos: the national one for a wider overview of the Italian LGBTQ movement, and the local one, entitled ‘Let’s Be Free!’ (‘Liberiamoci!’), produced by the Roman organising committee. Comparison of the LGBTQ national manifesto with the local one points up some interesting changes (above all in comparison to previous years) in terms of the political lexicon and the strategic claims adopted by the main LGBTQ groups.

We devote the two following sections to the analysis of the two events, focusing on: the languages; the representation and argumentation strategies; the claims of those involved in the debate, which enable analysis of the social interactions and conflicts among the different public discourses – the dialectical process between structure and action (Fairclough, 2001: 122). In particular, we pay attention to the most interesting elements of this dialectical process related to the conceptual frame of the secularisation process and the definition of citizenship. ⁸

Moreover, as we will see in the following sections, one of the heuristic principles for analysing the ideological dimension of public discourses is to conceive them as the making-of, as the discursive results of political, social and ideological processes. In this perspective, the two discourses can be interpreted as final (but provisional) results of a power struggle waged in order to win a sort of discursive ‘hegemony’. One of the most powerful and recurrent elements of this struggle is the typical populist ‘us/them’ opposition (Mény and Surel, 2002). The main processes that characterize the construction of this dichotomous opposition are ideological polarization; positive self-presentation by moral superiority; and discrediting of the opponent.

Which family? Nature, gender, and the phantom of neoconservative citizenship

In this section, we discuss the most significant discursive strategies adopted by the ‘Defending Our Children’ Committee in promoting the Family Day demonstration. Firstly, it should be noted that the announcement of the demonstration is generic and ‘neutral’: in the first press release promoting the event, the Committee describes itself as

[…] non-party and non-denominational, made up of free citizens who by giving a voice to millions of families in our country wish to publicly reaffirm the right of parents to educate and instruct their sons and daughters freely, especially with regard to issues relating to affectivity and sexuality. (Committee press release, June 8, 2015)

This non-confessional self-representation is very distant from the real formation of the Committee, which, as mentioned before, is entirely composed of leading members of the most active groups of the neo-conservative Catholic area (mainly pro-life and/or anti LGBTQ groups). This self-representation, evidently in contrast with the political profile of the group, can be interpreted as a specific strategy aimed, firstly, at being associated with the ‘common people’, the majority, and not with a specific and radical area of the Catholic movement (the most conservative one). Secondly, at sending an inter-religious and multi-cultural message based on ‘universal’ values that can be shared by different creeds, cultures and ethnic groups, thus making it possible to find new allies.

Moreover, the inter-religious and multicultural aspect is also fundamental in order to reinforce the universality of the Committee’s message. A discourse that can be easily understood and shared by individuals profoundly different from each other because it is based on common human values:

All these groups choose to take part, ensuring an ardent participation that testifies to the universality of the issues at the core of the initiative, issues that are very important for the People of the Families. (Committee press release, June 18, 2015)

[we are] free citizens giving a voice to millions of families […] to the People of the Family, who are concerned about the future of our children and grandchildren. (Committee press release, June 8, 2015)

In line with a typical populist approach, the Family Day demonstration is establishing itself as a synecdoche – as a part representing the whole – a synthesis (Incisa di Camerana, 2000) of the people. The People of the Family; people that are not identified on the basis of a single ethnic, religious or cultural identity, but on the common, ‘universal’ values of family, parental love and care. In order to reinforce this populist narrative, the Committee’s discourse is organized on the basis of a threat; a common enemy that enables the classic populist mechanism of an ‘us vs. them’ opposition (Mény and Surel, 2002). In fact, the most urgent concern that preoccupies this People of the Family is the defence of ‘our children’.

The theme of childhood threatened by moral and sexual corruption is a widespread discursive strategy in the public debate on LGBTQ rights, common to diverse national and local contexts, in which proposals for the granting of civil rights to LGBTQ people are discussed (Herdt, 2009; for an interesting example, see Robinson, 2008). The character of this threat/enemy is at the same time crucial and not obvious or easily predictable. In the Family Day discursive strategy, in fact, the enemy is not the LGBTQ associations pressing for civil rights but the

non-scientific lobbies [that are responsible for an] invasion concealed within a Gender ideology that indoctrinates our children, confusing their psycho–affective growth, starting from nursery school. (Committee press release, June 8, 2015)

We strongly reject the attempt to introduce in the primary and secondary school educational project that are oriented at confusing the sexual identity of the children […] Theories with a clear purpose: to eliminate any connection between biological sexual identity and formation of the personality […], which consequently are modifying human anthropology. (Committee press release, June 18, 2015)

The Committee focuses the attention on a public and secular dimension, namely the definition of science and the legitimacy of publicly speaking and teaching in the name of science. To be noted is that the label ‘non-scientific lobbies’ evokes a secretive, manipulative, dystopian dimension of science. Moreover, the use of the term ‘Gender’, in English and with the first letter of the word capitalised, alludes to a type of ideological colonisation put into practice by foreign cultures (Garbagnoli, 2014), distant from Catholic Mediterranean society. Furthermore, through the reference to cultural colonisation by non-scientific lobbies, the Committee can take a position against the recognition of same-sex unions, avoiding the potential danger of being defined in the public debate as an obscurantist, anti-modern movement. As mentioned before, the ‘Defending Our Children’ members, indeed, highlight the scientific sector of their profession instead of their religious beliefs and repeatedly use their professional status and skills to lend public support and culturally legitimate to their initiatives. The Committee’s main aim is to delegitimize the field of gender studies, and above all the cultural diffusion of gender awareness in Italian society (and school system). The concept of gender is therefore significantly subject to a re-semantisation process with the threatening expression Gender Ideology: a real ideology that stands in opposition to the natural science propounded by Vatican theologians, for whom gender is ‘the transcendent dimension of human sexuality conforming to the natural order that is already present in the body’ (Vollmer Coles in Garbagnoli, 2014: 256).

Gender Ideologies, in fact, are calling into question

the foundation of the family as defined in our Constitution. [These ideologies] are ready to sacrifice on the altar of civil rights the natural right of children to grow up with their mothers and fathers. (Committee press release, June 8, 2015)

Here the Committee is referring explicitly to the lay constitutional definition of the family as ‘a natural association founded on marriage’ (Article 29 of the Italian Constitution), thereby once again evoking the general frame of a common democratic order. The subject and target of the communication is always a generalized, universal audience, the People of the Family. Indeed, the focus is on a non-religious, secular domain and the common democratic order. Moreover, the speaking subject is always the people, a broad majority social force associated with a constitutional dimension. In this discursive context, the constitutional element is crucial: it is a polysemic concept that is simultaneously legal, ontological, and social.

It should also be noted that the argument pivots on the nature/culture dichotomy: this strategy permits a linkage between the topics of defending children and same-sex unions (Bellè et al., 2016a). This association is made by affirming the existence of a clear separation between masculinity and femininity, which are conceived as ‘naturally’ different and complementary dimensions generated by immeasurable physical and psychological differences (the most important of which is the ‘natural’ feminine vocation for motherhood and care). ⁹

The family, understood as heterosexual and founded on marriage, is conceived as the universal basis of society and public life, as the only legitimate subject of rights and citizenship. The family thus defined is the core of the (lay and secularized) democratic order and of public life, with a major shift from the private to the public dimension (and vice versa). The Committee’s discourse is also based on assertion of the family’s absolute educational freedom regarding issues such as gender and sexuality. This educational exclusivity of the private sphere of the family is constructed in counter position to the role of public school and its educative autonomy:

The promoters of the Committee formally are asking to the Italian Government […] to approve a decree that recognizes the preeminent right of parents to educate and teach their children, as established by article 30 of our Constitution and article 26 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. A decree that guarantees also the right to know in advance and in details the contents of all initiatives that concern – directly and indirectly – sexuality and affectivity, the fight against gender stereotypes and violence. A decree that explicitly establishes prior parental consent to these initiatives. (Committee press release, June 30, 2015)

The family’s absolute centrality and its supremacy over the public educational system is strongly affirmed. Here, the discursive strategy shifts from the public domain of the constitutional order to the private one of the rights of parents and families to educate ‘our children’ according to the natural principles of a common human anthropology. The discourse on sex, gender and affectivity must be controlled by the familial network and, above all, must remain a private matter (Foucault, 2003).

Which citizenship? Sex, families, and the pride of human rights

Differently from the monolithic self-representation of Family Day as a universal synecdoche of Italian heteronormative society, the National Wave Pride Manifesto declares from the outset the array of identities composing the LGBTQ movement:

We are women, fathers, immigrants, gays, transvestites, unemployed, anti-fascists […] We are multiple and diverse, and we identify ourselves in Pride Parade because we claim the uniqueness and the equal dignity of every individual. (National Manifesto, June 2015)

The political and discursive strategy of the Wave Pride Committee consists in positive self-representation in the public sphere counterposed to the attacks brought by ‘regressive’ sections of society. Dichotomies like lay/obscurantist, public/private, and progress/backwardness pervade the Pride lexicon, with clear references to the opposition between secularism and democracy and the rise of obscurantist religiosity and fascism (Braidotti, 2008, Richardson, 2017). The secular frame of the National Wave Pride connects the claim of agency and public recognition of LGBTQ rights to the imaginary of openness and brightness. Generally, all the issues raised in both Manifestos (the national and the local one) can be framed in the visibility/invisibility dichotomy, which recalls the fundamental and ambivalent image of the act of ‘coming out’ from the secrecy of ‘closet’ (Sedgwick, 1990):

The Pride Parades […] with the power of our bodies and our lives that take to the streets, are the most powerful answer to the imperative of homogenisation that dominates the public space. The Pride is the most visible and communicatively significant affirmation of our collective existence. (Rome Manifesto, June 2015)

Here, Pride is described as a manifestation with a twofold meaning: on the one hand, as a public demonstration for claiming rights, and, on the other, as the visible expression of LGBTQ people’s dignity and proudness in the public sphere. In other words, Pride Parade is understood as a political and physical space in which agency can manifest itself.

In this frame, ‘coming out’ becomes a term that overlaps both the private and public dimensions (Sedgwick, 1990), because the act of exiting from the private ‘closet’ corresponds to the conquest of the public space to oppose the neo-conservatives’ obscurantism and backwardness:

The last twelve months have been characterised by continuous attacks from their political trenches, made of street protests […], media mystifications, filibustering, political vetoes, power abuse, invective from pulpits, sabotage of acquired rights. Although we have tried to push these attacks into invisibility, they are undeniably incisive, impacting on the lives of LGBTQ people, undermining their safety and that of the places where they live. (National Manifesto, June 2015)

The use of military terminology, and the reference to the semantics of safety and security, recall Herdt’s (2009) definition of ‘sexual panics’, i.e. the outbreak of moral panics provoked by sexual alarms, usually fuelled by conservatives’ opposition to recognition of sexual citizenship rights as human rights. Nevertheless, the ‘human rights’ approach adopted in recent years by LGBTQ movements is defined by Petchesky (2000) and Herdt (2009) as a ‘negative’ one, meaning that institutionalized part of the LGBTQ movement focus more on the inclusion into existing civil rights than on the development of new claims.

The issue of social acknowledgement, connected to the dimension of visibility, refers not only to LGBTQ claims, but also to their definition as a ‘resource’ for the country to which LGBTQ people declare their ‘commitment for change and growth’ (National Manifesto). This argument refers to a ‘symbolic incorporation’ of LGBTQ people into a national community, by demonstrating that they ‘possess the psychological, moral, and social traits’ (Seidman, 2001: 323) of good and integrated citizens. This is a sort of a strategic ‘normalisation’ of gender and sexual differences used to claim equal civil and social rights (Seidman, 2001).

In this frame, an ambivalence emerges between the National and Rome manifesto concerning the draft law on civil unions. While the National Manifesto simply claims for same-sex marriage, civil unions and LGBTQ parenthood in general terms, the Rome Manifesto criticizes the Cirinnà draft law on civil unions (at that time not yet approved by Italian parliament), defining it as ‘an approximation to heterosexual couples’ that ‘ratifies unacceptable discrimination and results that have already been made obsolete in the social realm’ (Rome Pride Manifesto).

In spite of this nuanced contrast, a general strategy of LGBTQ ‘integrationism’ into (heteronormative) society emerges from the human rights approach of both documents, Rome Pride implying an ambiguous reversal of the nature/culture and difference/equality dichotomy criticized and deconstructed by feminist and queer epistemologies (Croce, 2015; Richardson, 2017). On one hand, in order to legitimate the inclusion/integration in the universal frame of ‘human rights’, the Rome Pride Manifesto performs a discursive naturalization of differences: ‘Diversity is the true natural condition of every human being, and is thus what we have most in common, beyond any label or belonging’ (Rome Pride Manifesto). In this way, nature is constructed as the unifying element of humanity itself, which has become the new rhetorical argument used to generalise the LGBTQ condition as that of the so-called ‘universal human being’ (Stein, 1999; Bellè et al., 2016a). On the other hand, in the national Manifesto the relationship between difference and equality is framed within the liberal ideal of universality, which is in turn supposed to be structurally neutral; which implies the well-known, problematic gender-neutral definition of citizenship criticized by the feminist and queer debate (Alcoff and Potter, 1993; Butler, 2004).

However, an ideological conflict between universalism (as a claim for normalising rights) and differences (as a revolutionary challenge to society) persists in the Rome Manifesto, where a more radical perspective re-affirms the ‘subversive’ challenge to the heteronormative social order raised by the LGBTQ movements.

[Pride Parades are] revolutionary acts, which starting from our experiences, address those who believe in radical social change […]. It is an act of liberation from stereotypes that limit social models and impose precepts and unfair norms that restrain the multiplicity, non-conformity and dignity of every individual person (Rome Manifesto, June 2015).

As this excerpt highlights, there is a remarkable ambivalence, concerning the concept itself of citizenship rights. What is being claimed, in fact, is the acknowledgement of LGBTQ differences, on the one hand, and the homologation and integration of LGBTQ issues as universal (or ‘human’) on the other.

Finally, the National Manifesto denounces the onset of an ‘obscurantist ideology’, which is pervading another significant sphere of society: public education, and in particular primary schools. The object of concern is the new law on school reform – called ‘Buona Scuola’ (‘Good School’) ¹⁰ – that centralises decision-making processes to school principals as regards programmes and teacher selection, thus ‘increasing the risk of discrimination or pressures on teachers due to their sexual orientation’ (National Manifesto, June 2015).

Education has being gravely damaged by the new law’s silence on gender education and combating bullying in public schools. This is the consequence of ‘fundamentalist and aggressive public communications’ (National manifesto) against the LGBTQ community, which is accused of undermining the foundations of civil cohabitation, family and educational models. By ‘fomenting the spread of a non-existent Gender Ideology’, and censoring any type of intervention against bullying and gender violence at school, the real aim of the neo-conservatives is to fuel the prejudices and obscurantism ‘typical of the most vulgar kinds of patriarchy and sexism’ (National Manifesto, June 2015).

To overcome the censorship on gender issues, the National Manifesto calls for a ‘secular public school system’ within an ‘integrated vision of society built on dialogue, the valorisation of differences and solidarity’. Visibility and invisibility are again in the background of the discourse: to the phantom of Gender Ideology, LGBTQ movements oppose an ‘integrated vision of society’ where real differences can be seen as they are and, thus, exist.

Concluding remarks: new public issues and old citizenship’s paradigms

In this article, we have focused on the Italian public debate on sexual citizenship concerning the issues of LGBTQ rights recognition and the introduction of gender educational programmes in public schools. We have analysed the public discourses developed by these political blocks in light of two events that took place in Rome in June 2015 and which can be viewed as being representative of the debate: the Family Day, promoted by the Catholic front, and the Rome LGBTQ Pride parade, officially named ‘Human Pride’.

The analyses of the official documents drafted for the two events, unexpectedly do not point out two incompatible discourses, rather it is possible to recognise several elements common to the two communicative strategies that relate to the discursive frame of secularisation. In spite of the collocation of one of the two events in the area of the neo-fundamentalist Catholic movement, indeed, secularized values are constitutive elements in the construction of the Western paradigm of citizenship. And the debate that we analysed is also a matter of redefinition of the concept of citizenship, related to the social and political changes that have occurred in recent years in terms of sexual and intimate rights - e.g. birth and reproductive rights, illness and genetic, death and end-of-life decisions. These topics concern the fundamental institution of the social contract and relate to social, political and scientific changes, involving the relation between the State and individuals, the boundaries among public interest, individual self-determination, and scientific freedom.

It is no accident that both the Family Day and the Human Pride promoters present their movements as secular forces. As we have seen, the Family Day Committee explicitly declares that it is a non-confessional group, underlining the universality of its reasons based on a common human anthropology. In the case of Human Pride, the promoters define their movement as a secular force of modernity counterposed to the obscurantist Catholic groups.

Science plays a crucial role in both discourses as a key element of the secularisation process related to the construction of the universal subject of modern citizenship. The modern, secularized discourse on citizenship must be scientific, according to a process that gradually substitutes God with (the scientific definition of) nature as the source of institutional legitimacy (Braidotti, 2008; Scott, 2009). Both discourses attribute great importance to precise and divergent definitions of science and scientists. In the Family Day discourse, science is the element that confirms the heteronormative order and the construction of masculinity and femininity as complementary and fixed dimensions. The enemy of this scientific evidence is the Gender Ideology, which denies the only possible scientific and natural truth with ‘ideological’ assumptions that are threatening the heteronormative social order based on the natural family (Bellè et al., 2016b).

On the other side, the Human Pride defences the gender studies and the educational programmes on gender relations at school as crucial steps in the construction of a modern, civil and secular society. Notably, – primary – education is the first and most important battleground for neo-conservatives strategies, which recognize the central importance of knowledge as a power and disciplinary device. As Foucault (2003: 254) argued, since the first decades of nineteenth century the claim of centralization of sexual education of children in the nuclear family ‘functions as a source of normalization’ in order to determine sexuality and rectify the abnormal. In neoconservative’s discourse, normality coincides with nature, in an essentialist and heteronormative perspective.

Nature and the so-called ‘naturalization process’ are also present in the Human Pride discourse, indeed, nature is the common frame in which all the possible human differences are included and have equal legitimacy to be part of humanity. Consequently, the political fight for the recognition of LGBTQ rights is re-elaborated in an integrationist perspective (Croce, 2015; Seidman, 2001) of human rights. In this sense, two opposite tensions – homologation versus heterogeneity – contend for discursive hegemony on the label ‘nature’, which remains the unquestioned frame and – in both discourses – is connected with the notion of universality, understood as common human condition, as indisputable basis of citizenship and rights (Bellè et al., 2016a).

Finally, in light of the empirical case analysed, we would add some concluding general remarks related to the scientific debate on the increasingly complex intertwining of new citizenship’s rights, secularisation processes and religion.

Firstly, concerning the contemporary debate on the redefinition of citizenship, feminist approach offers the remarkable epistemological advantage of focusing not on an abstract, ideal-typical model of citizen, but on embodied, concrete individuals conceived as the emergent, always relational entanglement of multiple, intersectional differences (Barad, 2007; Crenshaw, 1989; Butler, 2004; Richardson, 2017; Seidman, 2001).

Secondly, the extension of the domain of the secular in the narrative of the neo-conservative Italian front can be interpreted in different ways. On the one hand, it testifies to the complexity and specificity of the Italian case and, consequently, to the need for multi-secular, context-sensitive approaches (Burchardt et al., 2015) focused on the analysis of the socially and historically contextualized dynamics of secularisation, instead of the abstract concept of secularism. On the other hand, we have a neo-conservative Catholic front that utilizes a scientific rhetoric to reaffirm a conservative order founded on the overlapping of the ‘natural’ and divine. In order to deal with this ambiguity, we think that it would be helpful to improve the use of the discursive method in the study of religious/secular controversies (von Stuckrad, 2014). An approach that yields better insights into the linkages between the secular and the religious formations, understood as inseparable elements of Western modernity (Fallers Sullivan et al., 2011; von Stuckrad, 2014).