The City of Belmont has knocked back calls from a local resident to remove LGBTIQA+ themed books from within the youth section of the library.
Local resident Luigi Rosolin raised his concerns at a recent council meeting telling city officials that he understood that being gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender was “allowed by law”, he didn’t think it was appropriate for children under 13 to be able to read about it.
The Belmont resident shared that he had decided to visit the Ruth Faulkner Library to check the shelves for LGBTIQA+ content after seeing segments on television where people were calling for the removal of books with LGBTIQA+ content.
His concerns were reported in Perth Now by journalist Michael Palmer.
Rosolin told the council he’d asked staff to consider to removing any books with LGBTIQA+ references out of the youth section, but they’d not gotten back to him.
CEO John Christie said he was aware that he’d recently made the request to the library, but the city was of the view people could make their own decisions about which books they wanted to read.
“A great thing about living in Australia is that people have the freedom to be different without persecution or discrimination,” Christie said.
“The Ruth Faulkner Library aims to provide a space for everyone to belong to. This includes providing resources that represent our diverse community, including those that explore different sexual orientations, gender identities and expressions.”
The CEO said parents were the best people to guide what books their children took out of the library.
The call for the books to be removed follows a campaign from the Australian Christian Lobby which asks for people to nominate books they want taken out of libraries.
