Bologna, February 15, 2014 – “Surprising and totally unexpected statements from a politician whose actions had appeared committed to LGBT people. In addition to publicly asserting roles within a rather unconventional institutional structure, he dangerously discredits the educational intervention implemented by UNAR through the Beck Institute pamphlets.” The national LGBT associations (Arcigay, ArciLesbica, Agedo, Famiglie Arcobaleno, and MIT) are responding to statements made to the press by Deputy Minister Maria Cecilia Guerra regarding the educational materials for diversity sponsored by UNAR. This initiative and the entire National Strategy for the Prevention and Countering of Discrimination Based on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity—the five associations continue—are not the anarchic and isolated act of one office, but rather the realization of a political process implemented through UNAR by the people who, prior to Maria Cecilia Guerra, held the Equal Opportunities delegation. And we're not talking about the attempt to push one idea over another, but rather the necessary need to breach a system of media representation cannibalized by stereotypes about gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people. But also about women, foreigners, and everything else that subsequently becomes a recurring target of discrimination and hate crimes at a social level. Those teaching tools, optional and never imposed, serve to equip the teaching staff (not the students) with expertise on topics that are still difficult to find in educational programs today. Instilling doubt about the quality of those tools, supporting the shameful mystifying campaign of the world's most powerful lobby, on the very day the government dissolves, is behavior we never expected from Deputy Minister Guerra. From tomorrow on, it will be more difficult to rebuild the fabric of trust around diversity education projects, plots we risk having ruined in a matter of hours with an unreasonable last-ditch effort. If anti-discrimination intervention in schools is truly "crucial," as Guerra herself claims, what sense does it make to delegitimize an entire program? The narrative about "dangerous gender theories" written in the bishops' newspaper is precisely the obstacle that diversity education encounters daily as it attempts to reach schools: pages and pages of news stories these days recount the controversy sparked by children's books in which a puppy wants to study ballet, or two penguins care for an egg ready to hatch. Supporting these crusades without examining the content means placing a huge obstacle in the path of diversity education and inexplicably damaging the work of everyone, in public institutions, schools, and society.
Arcigay
ArciLesbian
Agedo
Rainbow Families
My.