ROME — If there’s a gayer country than Italy, I haven’t ogled it.

I don’t mean demographically gay. That’s unknowable. I mean spiritually gay. I mean the self-conscious style and gaudy opera of the place.

It’s shaped like high-heeled footwear. It’s a mecca of high-priced men’s wear. Its signature hunk of marble, the David, looks less like he’s girding for Goliath than like he’s posing between squats at the local Equinox. And have you seen those Venetian glass chandeliers, with their wild colors and wacky tentacles? They could be gay octopi on their way to an underwater Cher concert.

So why isn’t Italy kinder to gays?

Just a few weeks ago, after considerable shaming by the European Union, it finally legalized civil unions for same-sex couples, and while that was a step forward, it was also a reminder of how far Italy still lagged behind such densely Roman Catholic European peers as Ireland, Portugal and Spain, all of which had already accorded gays and lesbians actual marriage rights.

And shortly before that, when an international L.G.B.T. advocacy group released one of its gay-rights report cards, Italy ranked in the bottom third of the 49 countries that the group classified as European, behind Albania, Bulgaria and Estonia.