A gay rights' row heated up in Italy on Friday after a Catholic minister walked off in a TV debate about a draft bill granting legal recognition to same-sex couples.
Justice Minister Clemente Mastella stormed off during an advertising break in the Thursday night transmission of Annozero, a current affairs show on state broadcaster RAI helmed by top journalist Michele Santoro.
Mastella, who heads the centrist, Catholic UDEUR party, had been defending his opposition to the government bill which would give certain rights to cohabiting heterosexual and same-sex couples.
Gay rights' campaigners have organised a demonstration in Rome on Saturday in favour of the bill which several ministers will be attending.
But Mastella argued on Annozero that "cohabiting couples are not a family" and that the only family recognised by "natural law" was one based on the union of a man and woman.
A young man contested his traditionally Catholic views, asking him a question which the minister refused to answer.
Santoro annoyed the minister by insisting on the man's right to an answer.
Mastella's anger grew after a political cartoonist on the show held up cartoons satirising his behaviour and he walked off, complaining that the show was "one-sided".
Santoro told viewers after he left: "The arrogance of politicians has become unbearable... They have to get used to the idea of confrontation with ordinary people again".
Mastella attacked Santoro and RAI on Friday, saying that the show, which was watched by three million Italians, had been "biased", "anticlerical" and "against the Church".
He called on RAI's board of directors and parliament's RAI watchdog committee to intervene, saying that "if this is a public service then we can do without it. This is a serious political problem which I will put to the centre left".
The minister, whose party is one of nine in Premier Romano Prodi's centre-left government, also protested over what he said were "disgusting" images shown during the show. He was apparently referring to shots of Italy's 2000 'gay pride' march.
Santoro hit back on Friday, saying that "RAI is a service for the public and not political parties".
"Italian politicians continue to think that TV is only there for them to say what they want to say," said the reporter, who vanished from television screens for four years after being blacklisted by then premier Silvio Berlusconi.
Meanwhile, Catholic lawmakers on both sides of the political divide expressed support for Mastella.
DICO BILL THREATENS TO CAUSE MORE GOVT FEUDING.
The furore was emblematic of the divisions stirred by the so-called DICO bill, which would allow cohabiting couples to register their union, obtaining certain financial and inheritance rights and 'next of kin' rights if their loved one is physically or mentally incapacitated or in hospital.
Such couples currently have no shared rights to social benefits, property and inheritance - a situation which DICO supporters say is increasingly anomalous in a European state.
Prodi promised such a law in his election programme but must have the full support of his fractious Communists-to-Catholics coalition if it is to pass.
A host of politicians and celebrities are taking part in the Rome pro-DICO demo on Saturday, including Nobel literature prize winner Dario Fo; Equal Opportunities Minister Barbara Pollastrini, who helped draft the bill; Welfare Minister Paolo Ferrero, a hard leftist; and Environment Minister Alfonso Pecoraro Scanio, Italy's Green party leader who has proclaimed his bisexuality.
Democratic Left (DS) chief Piero Fassino, whose party is the largest in government, said the DS supported the demo and that DS members would be present, including Pollastrini.
"I hope it is a great success," he said, stressing that his party would fight for the DICO's swift approval.
But Culture Minister and Deputy Premier Francesco Rutelli, who heads the centrist, Catholic Daisy party, said the bill should be placed on the back burner because "the government has other priorities at the moment".
Prodi has only just emerged from a crisis caused by coalition policy differences and which entailed his brief resignation
Although Prodi subsequently passed parliamentary confidence votes reconfirming him as premier, his hold on power remains weak due to a razor-thin Senate majority.
Prodi has already said he will not put the DICO bill to a confidence vote, which would allow rebel Catholic allies to vote against it without putting the government at risk.
The debate has also exposed the amount of anti-gay prejudice still lingering in the Italian parliament.
Last weekend, Senator and Daisy member Paola Binetti branded homosexuality a "deviation of the personality".
Binetti is a member of the conservative Catholic organisation Opus Dei and one of the so-called Teodems (theological democrats) in Prodi's coalition.
Gay rights' groups were further enraged when veteran Christian Democrat statesman Giulio Andreotti made a comment which appeared to equate homosexuality with paedophilia.
The elderly life senator, who has said he will not oppose a DICO bill providing it does not extend to gay couples, told a newspaper this week: "Now I understand why my mother didn't want me to go to the cinema when I was a child. She was worried that I would meet certain bad people".
Before becoming Pope Benedict XVI, Joseph Ratzinger issued a strongly-worded document condemning same-sex unions as immoral, unnatural and harmful.
The 2003 document, drawn up when Ratzinger was chief theological advisor to the papacy, said politicians had a "moral duty" to do all in their power to prevent same-sex couples gaining legal recognition.
