1) In the first case (1995) the court held that it is not unconstitutional to restrict marriage to opposite sex couples, but did not say that a legislative decision to open up marriage for same sex couples would be unconstitutional. So it seemed that the court held that it was up to the legislator to decide. To some extent this decision was similar to the NY Court of Appeals decision in Hernandez v Robles: there is no constitutional right to same-sex marriage, but the legislature is free to allow same-sex marriage. (The religious right of course interprets this decision differently. In their reasoning, the const. court held that there is no const. right to same-sex marriage, so it follows that same-sex marriage is banned by the constitution. A rather strange conclusion, perhaps catholics should re-read the medieval scholastic treatises on logic.)

2) Then came the second case in 2007, when unfortunately the const. court ruled that same-sex marriage was unconstitutional. The court had to decide whether to allow a referendum on gay marriage or not. So the primary issue to be decided was whether a referendum can be held or not. Unfortunately this involved a ruling on the more substantial issue of whether same-sex marriage is constitutional or not.

So we kind of have a const. ban on gay marriage, although it is not explicitly in the constitution and a more open-minded court could revise and overrule the 2007 decision in future. Not likely in the near future of course.

http://www.gay-forum.it/forum/index.php?topic=16469.0

Vile whoring b*stards

Unfortunately, the Socialist-Liberal (!) gov’t of Hungary condcluded an agreement (a “concordato”) with the Vatican in 1997 which entitles the Catholic church to loads of money year by year. As a reparation for the nationalizing of their huge pre-WWII estates by the Communist state after WWII.

http://static.ilsole24ore.com/G/GuidaDiritto/binary/10507117.13/10507117.pdf

Should the Corte costituzionale – by some miracle – rule in favour of gay marriage, Italy would become the first European country to introduce marriage equality by way of a judicial decision.

well, actually the third post-communist/socialist country in cenral/eastern europe. beside the Czech Rep, Slovenia also introduced registered partnership in 2005/2006, although it seems that both the Czech and the Slovenian version of reg. partnership (civil union) offers much less in terms of rights&obligations.

Eg according to the ILGA Europe website the Slovenian reg partnership act “does not grant any rights in the area of social security (social and health insurance, pension rights and so on), or provide partners with the status of a next-of-kin to one another”. Interestingly, in Hungary even non-registered domestic partners (whether of the same or opposite sex) have social security rights, eg the surviving partner is entitled to a widower’s (widow’s) pension.

@Rocco and Drewski: True, but I think the Prodi gov’t was also not much better with all the proposals to introduce some form of a domestic partnership giving rights to couples after 9 or so yrs of cohabitation. But I have just read on wikipedia that Italy’s constitutional court will have to rule on gay marriage after a Venice court sent a case to the const. court in late April 2009.