Countering anti-lgbti+ bias in the European Union. A comparative analysis of criminal policies and constitutional issues in Italian, Spanish and French legislation.

Equality constitutes democracy’s core value. This is why the growing awareness of the dangerousness of homobitransphobia, as a factor that hurts lgbti+ minorities and breaks up the social fabric, is pushing democracies worldwide to approve criminal laws to counter it. However, this resort to punishment raises several constitutional issues, especially in relation to the role that criminal law ought to play in a democratic society. Despite being culturally and legally similar in many respects, Spain, France, and Italy have adopted different criminal policies to tackle this heinous and often subtle phenomenon. Comparison was thus assumed to be an appropriate and original tool to analyse more in-depth pros and cons of the legislation at issue.