Friday, July 17, 2015

Italian authors ask Venice to ban their books after gay children's stories pulled

After picture books about same-sex families are pulled from city’s schools, 267 writers ask for their work to be taken off shelves

Sinking sprits ... gondolas in Venice.
Sinking sprits ... gondolas in Venice. Photograph: petforsberg / Alamy/Alamy
More than 250 Italian authors have written to the mayor of Venice asking him to remove their books from the city, in an act of solidarity with the writers who have seen their picture books about same-sex families pulled from Venice’s schools.

Businessman Luigi Brugnaro, who says he is neither “left or right”, was elected mayor of Venice last month, and swiftly moved to take around 50 books from the city’s classrooms. In June, Brugnaro had told la Repubblica that he had “promised” this during his election campaign, and “I have done it”. “We do not want to discriminate against children,” he said. “At home parents can be called Dad One and Dad Two, but I have to think about the majority of families where there is a mother and a father.”

His move prompted outrage from the book trade, with the Association of Italian Publishers president Marco Polillo saying that pulling books from a school is “always unacceptable”. But a statement from Brugnaro issued last week said that the books had been collected in order to verify “which are, and above all which are not, suitable for preschool children”.
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