{"id":3076,"date":"2015-08-18T12:54:35","date_gmt":"2015-08-18T16:54:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/tatar\/?p=3076"},"modified":"2015-08-18T12:55:53","modified_gmt":"2015-08-18T16:55:53","slug":"mayoral-moral-panic-about-gay-fairy-tales","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/tatar\/2015\/08\/18\/mayoral-moral-panic-about-gay-fairy-tales\/","title":{"rendered":"Mayoral Moral Panic about “Gay Fairy Tales”"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"venice-web1-master675\"<\/span><\/p>\n

Seriously, you can’t make this stuff up! \u00a0Did we need any more evidence that the stakes are high when it comes to fairy tales and children’s literature? \u00a0On the plus\u00a0side, I feel sure that this kind of lunatic move\u00a0of banning children’s books\u00a0ends up being a net positive by revealing exactly how narrow-minded, misguided, and downright thick-headed\u00a0the Mayor of Venice is. \u00a0The Venetians will come to their senses in the next election. \u00a0So grateful for NYT “Watchdog”:<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2015\/08\/19\/world\/europe\/venice-childrens-books-ban.html?module=WatchingPortal&region=c-column-middle-span-region&pgType=Homepage&action=click&mediaId=wide&state=standard&contentPlacement=1&version=internal&contentCollection=www.nytimes.com&contentId=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2015%2F08%2F19%2Fworld%2Feurope%2Fvenice-childrens-books-ban.html&eventName=Watching-article-click<\/p>\n

There is the story of the male dog who aspired to be a ballerina. The one about the little boy who wanted to be a princess, and a princess who wanted to be a soccer player. The tale of the <\/em><\/span>penguin egg hatched and adopted by two male penguins<\/a> (based on a real story at the Central Park Zoo in New York). And another about a little boy who learns to live with a physical disability, metaphorically depicted as a little saucepan that bangs around in his wake.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

Yet one of the first formal acts of Venice\u2019s new conservative mayor, Luigi Brugnaro<\/a>, was to announce that he would ban them from the city\u2019s preschool libraries. After an outcry \u2014 from residents, authors, publishers, librarian associations and even Amnesty International \u2014 he whittled his list of banned books to just two.<\/em><\/p>\n

But that was not before the mayor had ignited a lively debate about the right of educators to choose their teaching tools without political interference, and about Italy\u2019s continuing struggle with broadening civil rights for gays.<\/em><\/p>\n

The two banned books touch on same-sex families living happily ever after. It only inflamed matters further when some national news outlets dismissively referred to the titles as \u201cgay fairy tales.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Seriously, you can’t make this stuff up! \u00a0Did we need any more evidence that the stakes are high when it comes to fairy tales and children’s literature? \u00a0On the plus\u00a0side, I feel sure that this kind of lunatic move\u00a0of banning children’s books\u00a0ends up being a net positive by revealing exactly how narrow-minded, misguided, and downright […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2125,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3076","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/tatar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3076","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/tatar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/tatar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/tatar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2125"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/tatar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3076"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/tatar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3076\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3079,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/tatar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3076\/revisions\/3079"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/tatar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3076"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/tatar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3076"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/tatar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3076"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}