Italians rally for gay and unwed couples' rights

ROME, Mar 10 (Reuters) Thousands of Italians rallied today for legal rights for unmarried gay and heterosexual couples while Roman Catholics launched a movement against what many of them consider an attack on the ''traditional'' family.

Demonstrators filled a Roman piazza in support of a bill to give unwed couples rights in areas like inheritance.

Some wore bishops' mitres with slogans against the Vatican, which sees the bill as an attack on the idea that families are based on marriage between men and women.

The rally included leftists from Prime Minister Romano Prodi's coalition, which is divided on the issue. Some coalition Catholics call homosexuals ''deviant'' and promise to shoot down the bill, which is being studied by a parliamentary committee.

Prodi, a practising Catholic, promised rights for de facto couples in his 2006 election campaign.

''We won the election by promising to do something for over a million Italians who are not linked by religious marriage but want their rights recognised,'' Vladimir Luxuria, a transgender leftist deputy Vladimir Luxuria and Prodi supporter, said at the rally.

Citing Prodi's tiny majority in the Senate, which forced him to briefly resign last month, Luxuria said the bill's supporters had ''to be sensitive and open up the debate to the centre-right opposition''.

But Catholics in the opposition and in the government cite an article in the constitution recognising the family rights of ''natural'' unions ''based on marriage''. They insist this refers exclusively to heterosexual unions.

Pierferdinando Casini of the opposition Christian Democrats' Union, opposed to the bill, said the sight of cabinet ministers contradicting each other, with some attending the demonstration, proved the ''government has lost its way''.

Catholic lay groups responded to the rally by launching the ''Committee for the Family''. Its president, Olimpia Tarzia, said the left's aim was ''to attack the family as an institution'' and and equate homosexual unions with marriage.

But one leader of rights group Arcigay, centre-left deputy Franco Grillini, said Italy had nothing to fear since 20 other European countries already had ''much more radical'' laws.

''None of these countries has seen the apocalyptic forecasts about the fate of the traditional family come true,'' he said.

''On the country, Denmark, the first country to introduce gay marriage, has a higher birth rate than Italy.'' Supporters of the bill include Nobel prize-winning playwright Dario Fo and Rome's mayor, Walter Veltroni. Some of them openly accuse the church of discrimination against gays.

''We want to stop the Vatican interfering in Italian political life,'' said protester Ada Gregacci.

REUTERS MS KN2225