Amongst other thorny issues largely ignored by the two major parties competing in this weekend’s general election is gay marriage.

Veltroni and Berlusconi have studiously avoided being drawn into the issue. Veltroni’s party, filled with a sizeable proportion of theo-cons (including the cilice wearing Opus Dei senator Paola Binetti, who in an interview aired during the election campaign asserted that gays and lesbians needed medical attention for their illness)has adopted the C.U.S (contratti di unione solidale), a limited form of social contract open to couples of all persuasion – though it’s buried away on their site, and makes no appearance in the party’s key manifesto points. Berlusconi’s PdL party has managed to avoid getting drawn into any debate on the topic, prefering to harp on about the French getting their paws into Alitalia.

So the smaller parties, and in particular the neo-fascist Destra party of Francesco Storace, get to play with it as an electoral issue. The argument against extending the various property and tax benefits entailed by marriage towards gay couples, according to figures like Daniella Santanche, is that marriage is a special social contract between the state and couples with children. Without the support of marriage, birth rates – according to their logic anyway – go down, and society enters into a crisis. A new way of repeating the age-old mantra, ‘think of the children’.

So it’s not homophobia, but a concern about birth rates that prevents extending various rights to co-habiting couples be they gay or otherwise.

In order to clear up confusion, then, this monkey proposes that marriage regulations be tightened up. Married couples without children should be automatically divorced by the state, and their tax bills adjusted accordingly. In cases where couples have been availing for a number of years of the advantages of marriage, without fulfilling their duty to society in return, fines should be introduced. Mitigating circumstances may include medically certified infertility, in which case no fine would be applicable (unless it could be proved that the couple were aware of their inability to contribute to society beforehand).

Contraception would be harder to address. One possibility could be the requirement to produce id when buying contraception – showing one’s conjugal status (only singles would be permitted). Difficult to see the left or right of the Italian political class voting for this measure though, given that it does not take into account the possibility of adultery. Obviously, though, any married couple involved in recreational sex using contraception would run the risk of fines and, perhaps, a jail sentence.

Harsh measures, perhaps, but I think reasonable in the context of a culture that the right proposes, not of ‘rights’ but of ‘responsibilities’.