At least one million people gathered at the Circus Maximus in Rome on Jan. 30 not to watch chariots roar around the racetrack but to defend family and children's rights against the proposed legalisation of civil unions for same-sex couples and the "stepchild adoption" which is set for voting by the Italian parliament.

The Italian government is pushing forward a civil unions bill after the European Court of Human Rights upheld complaints of discrimination by same-sex couples at the lack of legal recognition in Italy.

However, the bill has stirred up resentment between the LGBT community and country's powerful anti-gay Catholic lobbying groups, reports say.

The "Family Day'' mass rally was aimed to thwart an attempt by the ruling Democratic Party and its allies to grant legal recognition to gay unions the right to inherit a partner's pension and a controversial "stepchild adoption'' article which would allow a child legally to have same-sex parents in the case of a gay person adopting their partner's biologically child.

According to the protesters, such a measure "would enable homosexuals to contract with egg donors and surrogates to "synthesise" children who will never know their mothers and who lack any right to a natural family."

"The uterus is not a furnace in which a manufactured product is made!" said Massimo Gandolfini, the main spokesman for the march, to the assembled crowd, Lifesite News reported.

"[The proposed law] is destructive... There will be an enormous confusion in which the family will no longer exist, but rather various models and confusions of the family, and the victims will be our children, because the law has the power to change the culture of a people," he added.

Ida, another protester, also believes that the future of children and grandchildren is ruined if the proposed bill is allowed and marriage is destroyed.

"Children have a right to have a mother and a father. To grow up healthy, they need a male and a female figure,'' she said, according to the Guardian.

Other protesters say that same sex-marriage would be wrong even it was made legal in Italy. "I believe in Christian and family values. Our children are not for sale," said Gianluca, a participant, the Mail said.

The Committee to Defend Our Children, the organiser of the event, estimated that two million people attended the protest. The LA Times placed the estimate at "far fewer than a million'' while other estimates ranged from tens to hundreds of thousands.

Same-sex couples have already been granted rights in other Catholic-majority countries such as Ireland and Spain. The home of the Vatican remains the last country in Western Europe not to offer rights to gay couples, according to reports.