In Australia, the city council of Cumberland, an administrative subdivision of western Sydney, passed a motion which involves the elimination of books dealing with same-parent families from the eight libraries it manages. The ban on making books available for consultation and loan that deal with families made up of two fathers or two mothers was proposed by the Labor councilor (centre-left) Steve Christou, approved by a majority (5 votes to 4, four councilors were absent) and justified by the promoters with the need to protect children from “all forms of sexualisation”.
Christou, former mayor of Cumberland, he said of having presented the motion after many protests from members of the community, defined as “very religious and very linked to the traditional family” and gave as an example of books to be “banned” Same-Sex Parents not Holly Duhiginitially published in the UK and in local libraries since 2019: tells the experience of having two mothers or two fathers from the child’s point of view and has a photo of two men with a child on the cover.
The current mayor, Lisa Lake, voted against the motion and commented with “dismay and sadness” the outcome of the vote. The New South Wales state government also intervened on the issue: Arts Minister John Graham believes that the decision could violate the Anti-Discrimination Act and that Cumberland City libraries could lose public funding as a result. Approximately 250 thousand people live in the Cumberland City district, the city council announced that it had begun the analysis process to define which books “should be removed”.