The vote to block the legislation was initiated by right-wing parties. The rejection effectively kills the bill.

The Italian Senate rejected an anti-homophobia bill on Wednesday, the news portal thelocal.it writes. Senators from the right-wing Lega and the Brothers of Italy (FdI) parties reportedly burst out cheering upon seeing the result of the vote.

With 154 votes in favour, 131 against and two abstentions, the upper house successfully blocked the passage of the so-called Zan bill through parliament. Although votes were cast by secret ballot, the outcome suggests that some Senators from the ranks of the left-wing parliamentary majority also voted in favour of stopping the bill.

The vote was called by the right-wing parties. In essence, with this decision the Senate ruled that the bill is to be voted on as a package, rather than deciding about each article contained in it separately.

The proposed law had been drafted by Alessandro Zan, a politician for the left-wing Democratic Party (PD). The bill was passed by the House of Representatives last autumn, but there has been no progress since. With the current decision, the package bill loses its validity forcing any future consideration of it to be debated again from square one, which can start no earlier than six months from now. Alessandro Zan had predicted previously that if the right-wing motion succeeded, the bill would be „doomed.”

The bill also faced opposition from the Vatican, which expressed its reservations to the Italian government in June, thelocal.it portal writes.