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The current global political landscape is increasingly marked by the growth of right-wing populist parties. Although this party family has been the subject of a bourgeoning scholarship, the role played by religion in shaping its ideology is still an under-researched topic. Drawing on the qualitative context analysis of a large database of newspaper articles, electoral manifestos, and parties’ documents, this article studies the influence of religion on the political platforms of the Lega Nord (LN –recently rebranded just Lega) in Italy and the Front National (recently renamed Rassemblement National –RN)in France since the early 1980s. Our aim is twofold. Firstly, we would like to describe the role of religious values in the different political phases of the lifeof these parties. Secondly, we wish to assess whether and to which extent the appropriation of religion by these parties can be considered a phenomenon of religious dissent. Our analysis focuses on LGBT+ rights, a policy field that tends to bear the imprint of religion norms. Past studies have noted that right-wing populist parties support not only a nativist idea of citizenship, which prompts anti-immigrants and anti-Islamic stances, but also conservative interpretations of Christian values in terms of family issues and gender roles. In thelast three decades, European right-wing populist partieshave partly revised their positions on these issues. While some of them, like the Lega, have strengthened or made only marginal changes to their religiously-inspired moral conservatism, others, like the RN, have shown new openings on gender equality and LGBT+ rights.

ABSTRACTLGBT+ issues and marriage equality have for long been taboo in predominantly Catholic Italy, although since the 2000s they had been the subject of public debate. This might partly explain why in 2016 the country was the last western European state to approve a law legalizing same-sex partnerships, although the literature has also focused on the influence of the Catholic Church on the Italian political system, and on the influence of ʻmorality politicsʼ on Italian public discussion. This paper will take into account this most recent wave of discussion, specifically revolving around the Cirinnà bill approved by the Italian parliament in 2016, seeking to analyse the main phases of the debate, the actors involved, and their choices of frames and arguments. The article aims at understanding the changes taking place – in terms of actors’ behaviour and frames – throughout the different phases of the debate on the Cirinnà bill, as well as in comparison with the previous waves of debate on LGBT+ rights in the 2000s and 2010s. The concluding remarks will argue that final approval of the law was made possible by a mix of different factors, particularly: a change in actors’ perceptions, with wider recognition of LGBT+ rights as human rights, even among opponents of the law; the different modalities of involvement of the Catholic Church, which also implied a change in choice of frames; and the ultimate determination of the Renzi cabinet to pass the law, whose approval had become increasingly crucial for the Government’s image.

Abstract:The political science literature analyzing the genetic profile of European political parties has mainly focused on the salience, for the identity of today’s parties, of four social cleavages rooted in European history: among them, a religious/secular cleavage created by the birth of the modern national state. However, in the past two decades, some contributions about new party types developed after the end of the Cold War have hypothesized the existence of new cleavages, based on materialist/post materialist sets of values and on the acceptance or rejection of globalization and Europeanization processes. This article will work on this latter hypothesis, by highlighting how some European parties, previously secular or focused on the “traditional” religious cleavage, are increasingly using religion-related arguments in the context of a civilizational stance focused on anti-globalization and anti-EU discourses, but most of all on the idea of migrants and Muslims as a threatening other. The second section of the paper will focus on the Italian case and on the development of a right-wing populist discourse on religion by the Lega Nord party.

Issues related to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender rights have for a long time been taboo in Catholic Italy, and they began to be debated in the mainstream media only after the organisation of a gay pride march in Rome during the 2000 jubilee. In the years since, the subject has become a bone of contention between the centre-left and the centre-right parties. In particular, a heated debate developed before and immediately after the 2006 parliamentary elections, when the centre–left coalition included parties – such as the Partito Radicale (Radical Party) and Rifondazione Comunista (Communist Refoundation) – willing to approve a law giving legal recognition to same-sex couples, while, on the other hand, the centre-right relied strongly on ‘traditional values’ in order to garner votes. After that discussion, the issue was revived only during the campaign for the 2013 elections, when Nichi Vendola, the former Communist – and openly gay – leader of Sinistra, Ecologia e Libertà (the Left Ecology and Freedom), included in the centre–left coalition, put the problem on the political agenda again, without success in policy terms. This article will analyse the frames adopted by the various political actors to address the issue in the two campaigns, trying to understand the peculiarities of the two phases of the debate. In particular, it will show that there has been an evolution in the political actors’ ideas of marriage that could lead to the adoption of a law on same-sex civil unions in Italy in the near future.