BEATING SERENA

SHARAPOVA
SEEKS A WAY

ART TRADE
AUCTION HOUSE
SHIFTS GEARS

OSCAR CHANGES
ACADEMY SEEKS
MORE DIVERSITY

PAGE 10 | SPORTS

PAGE 7 | CULTURE

PAGE 14 | BUSINESS

....

MONDAY, JANUARY 25, 2016

The Saudis,
the C.I.A.
and arms for
Syrias rebels

Democrats
offer stark
contrast for
partys future

WASHINGTON

DES MOINES

Covert training mission,

funded by Riyadh, sheds
light on shared interests

Clintons centrist ideals

clash with Sanderss goal
for a return to liberalism

BY MARK MAZZETTI
AND MATT APUZZO

BY PATRICK HEALY

When President Obama secretly authorized the Central Intelligence Agency to

begin arming Syrias embattled rebels
in 2013, the spy agency knew it would
have a willing partner to help pay for the
covert operation. It was the same partner the C.I.A. has relied on for decades
for money and discretion in far-off conflicts: the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
Since then, the C.I.A. and its Saudi
counterpart have maintained an unusual arrangement for the rebel-training
mission, which the Americans have
code-named Timber Sycamore. Under
the deal, current and former administration officials said, the Saudis contribute both weapons and large sums of
money, and the C.I.A takes the lead in
training the rebels on AK-47 assault
rifles and tank-destroying missiles.
The support for the Syrian rebels is
only the latest chapter in the decadeslong relationship between the spy services of Saudi Arabia and the United
States, an alliance that has endured
through the Iran-contra scandal, support
for the mujahedeen against the Soviets
in Afghanistan and proxy fights in Africa.
Sometimes, as in Syria, the two countries
have worked in concert. In others, Saudi
Arabia has simply written checks underwriting American covert activities.
The joint arming and training program, which other Middle East nations
contribute money to, continues as
Americas relations with Saudi Arabia
and the kingdoms place in the region
are in flux. The old ties of cheap oil
and geopolitics that have long bound the
countries together have loosened as
Americas dependence on foreign oil declines and the Obama administration
tiptoes toward a diplomatic rapprochement with Iran.
SAUDI ARABIA, PAGE 6

A walk on the white side

CRAIG RUTTLE/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Clearing snow from a sidewalk in New York on Sunday after a massive storm that blanketed the East Coast moved out to sea. PAGE 6

A European holdout on gay marriage

ROME

Italians set to weigh law

to legalize civil unions,
but wide divide remains
BY JIM YARDLEY

Six years ago, Andrea Rubera married

his partner in Canada, where the gay
couple later became parents of three
young children. But when they returned

to their native Italy, a transformation

occurred. Mr. Rubera suddenly became
a single man, and his legally recognized
husband in Canada became his single
male roommate in Italy. Italian law also
divided custody of the children.
The familys journey brought to life the
wide divide between Italy and most of the
rest of the Western world on civil rights
for homosexuals. Like Canada, nearly
every Western country has legalized
same sex marriage or some form of civil
unions for gays and lesbians. Italy is the
outlier, partly because of the lingering in-

fluence of the Roman Catholic Church.

But on Thursday, following months of
delays and political jousting, the Italian
Senate will begin voting on legislation to
legalize civil unions, several years after
the failure of a similar effort. The outcome remains uncertain, as lawmakers
confront an issue that has challenged
traditional social mores, jumbled ideological lines and is being debated as the
politics of Italys Catholic Church are in
upheaval.
Certainly, the fact that it was not going to be an easy vote was something we

were aware of, said Monica Cirinn,

the senator sponsoring the legislation.
The legislation initially seemed headed
for a fairly smooth passage. Many Italian
cities, including Rome, already offer civil
union certifications, though they are
mostly symbolic. Prime Minister Matteo
Renzi endorsed the national legislation
and predicted that it would be passed last
year. Some opposition political leaders,
including former Prime Minister Silvio
Berlusconi, suggested they would support it. But any such certainty has since

The race between Hillary Clinton and

Senator Bernie Sanders, which voters
will begin deciding next Monday, is not
just about the White House anymore. It
has intensified into an epochal battle
over their vastly different visions for
the Democratic Party after two decades
of centrist policies and presidential
nominees.
Mr. Sanders, a New Deal-style liberal
from Vermont, last week became the
partys first top-tier candidate since the
1980s to propose broad-based tax increases. He argues that only muscular
government action Wall Street regulations, public works jobs, Medicare for
all will topple Americas rigged
economy.
Something is grotesquely wrong in
America, he said Thursday in New
Hampshire, urging voters to deliver a
landslide in November that would cow
Congress into enacting his agenda.
Mrs. Clinton, a mainstream Democrat, has started contrasting herself
with Mr. Sanders by championing a
sensible, achievable agenda and
promising to build on President

JOHN MINCHILLO/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Senator Bernie Sanders is a New Deal-style

liberal Democrat from Vermont.

ITALY, PAGE 4

Privacy is French officials agenda

PARIS

Confrontation is looming
with big U.S. companies
over use of personal data
BY MARK SCOTT

DMITRY KOSTYUKOV FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Isabelle Falque-Pierrotin, Frances top privacy regulator, has regularly pushed companies
like Facebook and Google to better safeguard the personal data of European citizens.

The latest standoff between Europe and

American tech companies runs through
a quiet street just north of the Louvre,
past chic cafes and part of the French
national library, to the ornate office of
Isabelle Falque-Pierrotin.
From here, Ms. Falque-Pierrotin has
emerged as one of the most important
watchdogs for how companies like
Facebook and Google handle the billions

of digital bits of personal data like

names, dates and contacts routinely
collected on Europeans. Since 2011, she
has been Frances top privacy regulator,
and for the last two years, she has led a
group of European data-protection officials. In those posts, Ms. Falque-Pierrotin has regularly pushed companies to
better safeguard peoples data.
Her role will come into even sharper
focus in the coming weeks. Ms. FalquePierrotin, empowered by Europes
highest court, will be at the heart of efforts to police how digital data is transferred outside the European Union, a
central aspect of many European and
American businesses. That role will be
amplified even further if, as is now
widely expected, American and European negotiators fail to reach a new

Signs of slower growth at Apple

When a citys water turned brown

Some investors now see Apple as a

value stock, a label typically used for
reliably profitable companies rather
than those that deliver runaway
revenue growth. BUSINESS, 13

As every major decision was made

more than a year ago, officials at all
levels of government acted in ways that
contributed to the health emergency in
Flint, Mich. nytimes.com/us

Googles innovation chief

Return of the time-share hard sell

Larry Page, a company co-founder, has

handed off day-to-day oversight. His
new role is part talent scout, part
technology visionary. BUSINESS, 13

High-pressure practices by Diamond

and others have prompted lawsuits and
led to predictions that regulators will
increase oversight of the industry.

The former mayor of New York City is

said to be frustrated by what he sees as
a presidential race gone haywire. PAGE 5

Baseballs sharpest drivers

KHALED DESOUKI/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE

Tahrir Square in Cairo on Sunday, the eve of the anniversary of the 2011 uprising. The government has sought to avoid protests with a wide crackdown. WORLD NEWS, 4
QUIET CAPITAL

NEWSSTAND PRICES
France 3.20
Andorra 3.50

Morocco MAD 30

Antilles 3.80

Senegal CFA 2.500

Cameroon CFA 2.500 Tunisia Din 4.500

Gabon CFA 2.500
Ivory Coast CFA 2.500

Reunion 3.50

IN THIS ISSUE

No. 41,324
Books 7
Business 13
Crossword 12
Culture 7
Opinion 8
Sports 10

Lynchings on rise in Mexico

The actions are born of a sense of
hopelessness and impotence in a
country where 98 percent of murders
go unsolved and many crimes are not
even reported. WORLD NEWS, 6

If major league stars want reclining

chairs, wraparound leather couches
and big-screen televisions in their
customized vehicles, they know where
to go. nytimes.com/baseball

Josphine Collection
Aigrette Impriale Ring

Security limits to Obamas gadgets

President Obama has an affinity for
cutting-edge personal technology, but
security concerns mean his devices
must have certain features disabled.
nytimes.com/politics

chaumet.com

:HIKKLD=WUXWUZ:?k@l@c@f@a"

BLOOMBERG WEIGHS THIRD-PARTY RUN

The playwright, who was born in 1915

and died in 2005, found inspiration in
the boroughs neighborhoods where he
lived. nytimes.com/nyregion

A drug to cure fear, and its origins

or e-mail us at [email protected]

DEMOCRATS, PAGE 5

Arthur Millers Brooklyn

Anxious Chinese leaders find

themselves under pressure to take a
more active role in Afghanistans peace
process. WORLD NEWS, 4

00800 44 48 78 27

Obamas legacy in health care, the economy and national security.

She is the classic continuity candidate: seeking support from blacks, Hispanics, women, union members and
suburban voters, and proposing policies
that are friendly to families and busi-

nytimes.com/business

Afghan strife weighs on China

FOR SUBSCRIPTION INFORMATION, CALL:

PRIVACY, PAGE 15

PATRICK SEMANSKY/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Hillary Clinton, a mainstream Democrat,

champions a sensible, achievable agenda.

ON LI N E AT I N Y T.CO M

I N S IDE TO DAYS PA P ER

New research into anxiety disorders

suggests that it may be possible not just
to change certain types of emotional
memories, but even to erase them,
Richard A. Friedman writes. OPINION, 8

data-transferring deal by Feb. 1.

One thing is clear, she says: The practices of American businesses and
tech companies in particular are
squarely in her sights.
American companies do not have an
immediate right to collect data on our
citizens, Ms. Falque-Pierrotin, 56, a
blunt-speaking career civil servant,
said recently in an interview. If they
are on our soil, then they need to live
with the consequences.
Greater oversight fell to Europes national data regulators in October, when
the European Court of Justice annulled
a 15-year-old pact known as safe harbor,
which had allowed companies to move
information freely between the United
States and Europe. The judges ruled

....

| MONDAY, JANUARY 25, 2016

INTERNATIONAL NEW YORK TIMES

World News

middle east europe

Egypts raids call attention to revolts anniversary

CAIRO

BY KAREEM FAHIM

The normally invasive Egyptian authorities had long left Studio Emad Eddin alone, seeing no threat from a performance space that houses rehearsal
studios and offers classes in set design
and drama.
But this month, 18 plainclothes agents
from the Interior Ministry showed up
with a warrant, asked about licenses
and then confiscated equipment, including some speakers and a sound mixer,
according to Nevine El Ibiary, one of the
studios founders.
The search came within weeks of similar raids at several cultural venues and
amid a vast security dragnet in downtown Cairo part of an extraordinary
effort by the government of President
Abdel Fattah el-Sisi to prevent any
protest commemorating the uprising
that started on Jan. 25, 2011, and toppled
President Hosni Mubarak.
The security response has been in
keeping with the governments reputation for repressing most kinds of dissent. But the scale of the clampdown has
baffled many people here, as has the
level of official alarm, from a government that has faced no challenge from
large-scale protests in years. In word
and deed, Mr. Sisi and other officials
have treated even the possibility of
demonstrations on the anniversary as a
grave threat to the nation.
The sense of panic has been attributed to concerns that the public is losing
patience with the government amid
high unemployment, rising prices and a
persistent militant insurgency that,
among other things, has devastated
Egypts tourism industry.
But those factors alone were not sufficient to explain the overheated response, analysts said. From the perspective of the security services, the
date Jan. 25 was itself a danger, as
a reminder of their catastrophic, if momentary, loss of control.
There is kind of a trauma that is
highly attached to this date, said Amr
Abdul Rahman, the director of the civil
liberties unit at the Egyptian Initiative
for Personal Rights. For the police, a
particular focus of protester anger in
2011, this is a black day a day of defeat, and something they cannot swallow.
The authority of the Interior Ministry,
which supervises the police, has been
restored under Mr. Sisi, a former army

He didnt leave country

with others in swap, but
his location is unclear
BY RICK GLADSTONE

ROGER ANIS/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Cairo on Sunday, a day before the fifth anniversary of the uprising that toppled Hosni Mubarak. Egypts government is seeking to prevent any protest commemorating the revolt.

general who came to power after leading the 2013 military ouster of President
Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood. Leading up to Jan. 25, the ministry
has tried to reclaim the anniversary,
urging people to celebrate Police Day,
which falls on the same date.
The ministry recently released several videos that highlight the chaotic transition after Mr. Mubaraks fall and focus
on the Muslim Brotherhood. Set against
foreboding music, the videos depict protester violence and end with a slogan:
Crimes the Egyptians will not forget.
An open letter from the ministry to
the Egyptian people posted on Facebook noted the 64th anniversary of Police Day and made no mention of the

Jan. 25 uprising. We will always be the

police of the people, it said.
The interior minister, Maj. Gen. Magdi Abdel-Ghaffar, did offer a gesture to
at least one group for Jan. 25 announcing special family visits for prisoners,
in honor of both the uprising and Police
Day, according to Al-Ahram, the flagship state newspaper.
Even before the latest police raids,
government efforts were well underway to repossess the downtown streets
where the 2011 protests grew. Among
the most significant was the alteration
of Tahrir Square, the focal point of the
demonstrations.
In the center of Tahrir, officials tried
to erect a monument to commemorate

the martyrs of Jan. 25 and June 30,

the date of mass demonstrations
against Mr. Morsis rule, but protesters
tore it down. The government settled for
a large flagpole instead. The authorities
also placed a large metal gate at one entrance to the square that they could shut
against an advancing crowd.
The streets beyond the square are
also being transformed by a private initiative to beautify the grand neoclassical buildings downtown.
Ms. Ibiary, of Studio Emad Eddin,
said it was possible that the visit from
Interior Ministry officials was related to
a broader gentrification campaign,
which has included the dispersal of
vendors in the area.

But it seemed to be a warning from

the police, she said a message to cultural organizations like hers, where 75
percent of the users of the space are
young people. They are saying, we exist, so beware, she said.
The downtown security sweeps included visits to hundreds of apartments
and cafes and were the most visible
manifestation of the governments
alarm. But across Egypt, dozens and
perhaps hundreds of antigovernment
activists were also rounded up, including Islamist administrators of Facebook
pages, Mr. Abdul Rahman said.
Amina Ismail contributed reporting
from Cairo.

Beijing faces pressure to take role in Afghan peace efforts

BEIJING

BY EDWARD WONG
AND DAVID JOLLY

As a bloody offensive by the Taliban

spreads in Afghanistan and with American combat operations there officially
ended, anxious Chinese leaders find
themselves under pressure to take a
more active role in the long-stalled
peace process, according to scholars
and current and former diplomats.
For observers of Chinese diplomacy,
that kind of commitment is surprising
since China often tries to take a hands-off
approach in regions and nations at war.
The big backdrop is that the United
States will have withdrawn most of its
troops from Afghanistan with the antiterrorism mission unfinished, which is
leaving the country a mess, said Du
Youkang, who worked in Islamabad as a
diplomat and is now the director of the
South Asia Studies Center at Fudan University in Shanghai. Bombings have
never stopped, even in the capital. Afghanistan shares a border with China,
so in this case China must get involved
to promote the talks and to secure the
stability in the region.
Yet if Beijing is to play a productive role
in peace talks with the Taliban, the officials and scholars say, it will have to convince its ally Pakistan that an Afghanistan at peace and engaged politically and
economically with all regional powers,
including India, is in Pakistans interests.

U.S. prisoner
freed by Iran
is said to be
F.B.I. adviser

The Afghan foreign minister, Salahuddin Rabbani, begins an official

four-day visit in Beijing on Monday, and
the topic of bringing Afghanistans warring factions to the negotiating table is
expected to be the top priority in meetings with Chinese leaders.
Mr. Rabbanis trip here signals that
China has a stake in resumption of
peace talks, which are still at an early
stage and stalled months ago.
One reason for Chinas engagement is
that a stable Afghanistan could become
a critical transportation hub and market
for Chinese goods, and, eventually, another investment opportunity for President Xi Jinpings grand economic plans
for Central Asia.
Yet security concerns loom alongside
the economic motive. China has become
increasingly worried about the insurgent violence in its western frontier region of Xinjiang, and officials say that
the Uighurs, a Turkic, mostly Sunni
Muslim ethnic group, might be falling
under the influence of radical elements
from outside China, motivating some of
them to carry out attacks in Xinjiang.
Since 2001, Uighurs have fought in Afghanistan, and Afghan officials say they
have alerted Beijing about the dozens of
Uighurs that have been captured there
recently, even if some foreign analysts
say Chinas expressed fears of organized terrorist violence in Xinjiang is
overblown.
Uighur militants in Afghanistan have
not been neutralized yet, Mr. Du said,

because the government has not been

able to assert control over all of its sovereign area.
China had long been reluctant to get
involved in the Afghan war, not wanting
to be seen as taking sides. But Afghan
officials, beginning under the administration of President Hamid Karzai, have
been insistent, pressing Chinese leaders at every opportunity to use their influence on Islamabad to curb the
Taliban, which Pakistan had helped to
create in the 1990s.
Barnett Rubin, an American scholar
of Afghanistan at New York University
and former special adviser to the United
States and the United Nations, said the
formation of the Quadrilateral Coordination Group, which is scheduled to
hold its third meeting in Islamabad in
early February, was significant because
it was the only institutionalization so
far of U.S.-China political cooperation in
Afghanistan.
This means that the two countries
are coordinating their policies much
better, he added. Theres the U.S. with
some influence in Kabul, and China with
some influence in Pakistan.
One important role for China in the
process is to provide reassurances to Pakistan, he said. If China were to support common positions of the U.S. and
Afghan governments, it would be much
more difficult for Pakistan to resist that.
While the talks at this stage are still
aimed only at establishing a roadmap
for future negotiations, there has been a

significant accomplishment winning

Chinas agreement that it would put its
weight behind promoting face-to-face
talks between the Taliban and the
Afghan government.
A previous round of talks collapsed
last year with the revelation that Mullah
Mohammed Omar, a Taliban founder,
had been dead for two years, causing a
split in the ranks of the insurgency and

Afghanistan shares a border

with China, so in this case
China must get involved to
promote the talks.
uncertainty among participating nations. One expectation among negotiators is that eventually Pakistan will
have to bring pressure on the Taliban,
including militarily.
Pakistan has long treated Afghanistan as a strategic territory that must at
all costs be kept from falling under the
influence of its arch-rival, India. The
question of whether Beijing can bring
Pakistan around looms heavily in the
minds of Afghans.
China needs a peaceful and stable
neighborhood to advance its economic
interests, said Davood Moradian, head
of the Afghan Institute for Strategic Studies and an adviser to Mr. Karzai. He cited
the new Silk Road initiative, Beijings
quest to expand its economic influence
westward toward Europe by increasing

trade and development in Central Asia.

Afghanistan could play an important
part in Chinas plans, if it can overcome
the deadly strife that currently makes
doing business a near impossibility.
Chinas economic ambitions conflict
with important aspects of its strategic
vision, Mr. Moradian said, since Beijing
sees its alliance with Pakistan as essential to building a regional bulwark
against India and the United States,
even as Pakistan uses destabilizing
groups like the Taliban as tools of foreign policy.
China could make a major difference
if it pressed Pakistan to concede on its
support for the Taliban, but so far both
Beijing and Washington have relied on
a policy of appeasing Islamabad, Mr.
Moradian said.
China does have economic incentives
for helping with the peace process, but
those are secondary to trying to establish stability, Mr. Du said. The copper
mine at Mes Aynak operated by a
Chinese state-owned enterprise has languished mainly because of Afghanistans unstable security situation and the
precarious state of its transportation
network.
How are you going to invest in, excavate and ship out all that copper if the
war has never stopped? he said.
Edward Wong reported from Beijing,
and David Jolly from Kabul, Afghanistan. Yufan Huang contributed research
from Beijing.

An American prisoner recently freed by

Iran, but about whom little is known, is a
former California-based carpet seller
and F.B.I. consultant, according to a
news service run by expatriate Iranian
journalists.
The news service, Iranwire, said on
Saturday that Iranian officials might
have believed the man had links to the
case of Robert A. Levinson, an American who went missing in Iran nearly
nine years ago.
Iranwire also reported that the prisoner, Nosratollah Khosravi, whom it
identified by an alternately used name,
Nasrollah Khosravi-Roodsari, had left
Iran. Mr. Khosravi was the only American prisoner who did not immediately
depart the country after a deal to release
prisoners was announced a week ago.
The report was based on what Iranwire said were interviews with Mr.
Khosravis former cellmate and a family
member, and confirmed with three independent sources, but not with Mr. Khosravi, whom it said could not be reached.
None were identified by name.
There has been no other indication
that Mr. Khosravi has left Iran, but international news organizations with
correspondents there have not been
able to locate or interview him.
If confirmed, the Iranwire report
would fill in some gaps in what is known
about the prisoner release, in which five
people, including four Iranian-American dual citizens, were released by Iran,
and seven people, including six IranianAmerican dual citizens, were released
by the United States.
Iranwire was created by Iranian journalists living outside the country, which
exerts strict controls on the domestic
news media. The founders include Maziar Bahari, an Iranian-Canadian who was
himself a prisoner in Iran. It has maintained numerous contacts inside Iran.
Mr. Bahari said in a Twitter post that
Iranwire had waited to report on Mr.
Khosravis background until it knew he
was safely out of Iran.
It described Mr. Khosravi as a former
soldier in his 50s who was deployed in
northeast Iran after the countrys revolution in 1979, and who like many others
left Iran in the 1980s for the United
States. It said he moved to California,
home to a large Iranian expatriate community, became known as Fred Khosravi, and worked in the carpet business
as a designer and seller in California
and Florida. The account quoted his
Tehran cellmate as saying Mr. Khosravi
had told him that he later went to work
as a freelance consultant to the F.B.I.,
returned to Iran in late 2013 to visit his
aged mother in Tonekabon, a city near
the Caspian Sea, and decided to stay
there and teach English.
When Mr. Khosravi saw a BBC report
about Mr. Levinson, a former C.I.A. and
F.B.I. operative who has been missing in
Iran since March 2007, the account said,
he got in touch with an old F.B.I. contact
to say he knew Mr. Levinsons whereabouts. When interrogated by Iranian
officials about this later, the account
said, he claimed to have been under the
influence of alcohol and had lied to impress his F.B.I. contact.
The Iranian government has repeatedly denied any knowledge of Mr.
Levinsons disappearance or whereabouts.
The Iranwire account said that Mr.
Khosravi was imprisoned last May by
government intelligence agents when
he tried to leave the country and that for
a long time did not tell family members
that he had been detained. The account
quoted his lawyer, whom it did not
identify, as saying his arrest had been
the result of a misunderstanding.

Italys vote on same-sex unions brings out divisions in church and politics
ITALY, FROM PAGE 1

dissolved; Mr. Berlusconi has softened

his position by saying lawmakers in his
center-right party, Forza Italia, should
vote their own conscience.
Mr. Renzi has maintained his support
yet also acknowledged that civil unions
are a delicate issue that divides his center-left Democratic Party and also
presents a challenge for his governing
coalition, since the minority partner is
the conservative party New Center
Right, which largely opposes the bill.
We are the only European country
without a norm on civil unions and we
want to fill the gap, Mr. Renzi said last
week, predicting passage. I only hope
that the debate, in the next days, will
stay serious and focused on the merits,
without becoming an ideological clash.
But an ideological clash is probably
unavoidable. Advocates and critics of
the legislation are planning competing
rallies for the coming days. Critics have

attacked the bill on different grounds,

with some arguing it would violate the
Italian Constitution by equating civil unions to marriage, while others have opposed a so-called stepchild adoption
provision. This allows a gay couple to
adopt a child as long as one of the partners is the biological parent of the child.
Advocates of the provision say it would
remedy glaring legal problems facing
many gay families, especially those who
became parents through surrogacy. Italian law now recognizes only the spouse
with biological ties to a child as a legal
parent. This also means that the children
have no legal rights to property and other benefits from the other parent.
There are major injustices coming
from this, all toward the kids, Mr.
Rubera said. We are dreaming to be
recognized as we are as a family.
Critics have argued that the stepchild
adoption provision is a Trojan horse
that could undermine Italys prohibition

ALBERTO PIZZOLI/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE

Backers of the bill held alarm clocks at a rally

in Rome on Saturday to wake up Italy.

of surrogacy. Gay advocates dispute

this argument, noting that the overwhelming majority of couples who leave
Italy to pursue surrogacy are heterosexual couples.
Yet the issue seems to have weakened
public support for civil unions. Different

polls show that support for same-sex

civil unions has dropped to 46 percent in
January, compared with 67 percent last
May. A poll conducted in January by
IPR, an independent polling and marketing firm, also found that only 15 percent of respondents supported stepchild
adoption for gay couples.
Dr. Gian Luigi Gigli, a member of the
Italian lower house who opposes the
legislation, said many opponents did not
want to discriminate against homosexuals but found the bill too far-reaching,
especially on the stepchild adoption provision. There is an increasing opposition, said Dr. Gigli, who is a physician.
In the past, Italys powerful Catholic
Church would very likely have played a
major role in opposing the legislation
(as happened in France, where Catholic
groups tried in vain to prevent passage
of the countrys same-sex marriage law
in 2013). But in promoting a more tolerant tone, Pope Francis has discouraged

bishops around the world from diving

into culture war issues that have alienated some faithful from the church.
This has created a divide within the
Italian Episcopal Conference as Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco, president of the
conference, has openly encouraged
Catholics to join opponents of the legislation at a coming Family Day rally. Yet
the conferences secretary general,
Msgr. Nunzio Galantino who was appointed directly by Francis has been
more cautious in directly aligning the
church in such a contentious fight.
In an interview, Monsignor Galantino
said that he recognized that the government has the right to establish laws that
prevent discrimination against all people
but that he opposed the bill before the
Senate because he says it equates civil
unions with marriage and because of the
clause allowing stepchild adoptions.
Massimo Franco, a columnist for Corriere della Sera, a national newspaper,

wrote recently that Francis apparently

canceled a meeting with Cardinal Bagnasco after the Italian prelate went public with his support for the opposition
rally. In an interview, Mr. Franco said
the stepchild adoption provision was
causing genuine concern among many
lawmakers, especially Catholics, which
concerns the Renzi administration.
Italy is clearly under pressure. Last July, the European Court of Human Rights
found that its failure to recognize samesex unions represented a violation of the
European Convention on Human Rights.
Plaintiffs also are challenging existing
laws in Italian courts.
For Ms. Cirinn, the sponsor of the
civil unions bill, passage is a matter of
extending civil rights that have been
blocked for too long.
This is a moment to break the dam,
she said.
Gaia Pianigiani contributed reporting.