No, Italy has not canceled Pride Month and replaced it with Family Month

By: Vivek J
June 19 2023

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Context

The LGBTQ pride month is celebrated each year in the month of June in support of the members of the community. As the Pride Month events were about to begin in June 2023, several social media posts started claiming that Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Maloni had canceled Pride Month celebrations and that the country would observe Family Month instead. 

Italy’s ruling party, Brothers of Italy, is a far-right party. There have been several instances where the Italian ruling party or its members have declined to support the LGBTQ community. For instance, in early June 2023, the ruling party’s government in Rome’s Lazio region withdrew support for a pride event organized by “Roma Pride,” an organization that “deals with the claim and protection of the civil rights of LGBTQI people.”

As the Pride events are ongoing worldwide, several narratives about Italy replacing Pride Month with Family Month have flooded social media platforms. However, these claims are incorrect. 

In Fact

We went through the Italian government websites and their respective social media handles and found no such announcements. There aren’t any credible media reports about such an announcement either. We have contacted the Italian Prime Minister’s office and are awaiting a response.

Furthermore, we did not find any pro-LGBTQ communities or organizations reporting or posting on social media platforms about the same. However, we did come across posts about several pride events held across several cities in Italy. On its Twitter account, Roma Pride has posted images of pride events held during pride month in 2023. 

BBC journalist Shayan Sardarizadeh has also tagged a similar viral post and noted that there is “no evidence” of such an announcement by the Italian government.  

We also found a Twitter reply by a journalist from Rome, Dr. Jules Gomes, stating, “This report is not true and Prime Minister Meloni, although highly critical of so-called 'Pride' has not launched 'Family Pride Month' in Italy. Would be awesome if she did. Just shows you how easy it is to spread #FakeNews.” This post was in response to a tweet that claimed the Italian government had canceled Pride Month celebrations and replaced it with Family Month.

Logically Facts has reached out to some of Italy’s Pride groups and activists for a comment on the matter, and we'll update this fact-check once we have a response. While some pride events have already taken place in Italy in June 2023, dozens of such events are scheduled in the coming weeks. There is no indication that the Italian government has canceled pride celebrations in the country or prevented pride events from being hosted. 

The Verdict

There are no official announcements from the Italian government about canceling Pride Month celebrations nor are there any credible reports suggesting the same. Pride Month celebrations are ongoing in full swing in Italy and elsewhere. Therefore, we have marked this claim as false.