“I am very sad that this has happened – it is obviously sorted which family is right, which is not,” the artist tells the portal “Delfi”. Elīna Brasliņa about the news that swept the media in many countries this week. Namely, a bookstore was sold in Hungary, which sold her and the American-Spanish poet Lawrence Shimel’s work – the book “What a family!” The penalty is applied for unfair commercial practices, but the cause of the problem is related to the depiction of the model of single-parent parents in the book.
What is the justification for the punishment imposed by the Hungarian Pest District Administration, which is said by the author of the book Shimel and the illustrator Braslina, as well as the publisher in Hungary – the parties were questioned by the portal “Delfi”. We also tried to clarify what this 36-page book “What a Family!” Is really about. This edition contains books “Morning Early” and “Time to Sleep”, which are also published in Latvian (in Latvia in 2018 “Mansards”) and in 11 other languages, both by Šimels and illustrator – Brasliņa (both in the title). The book is also planned to be published in Russia, Iceland, Malta and Wales soon. The book, published in Russia, has a special warning on the cover.
However, it should be noted that the decision taken in Hungary to penalize the bookshop has nothing to do with European Parliament a European Commission the Hungarian law against the LGBTQI + community, or people with a different sexual orientation, criticized by the President, which came into force later on 8 July. According to the Euractiv portal, the law originally provided for stricter penalties against pedophiles, but a later addition to the bill included a ban on portraying homosexuality and gender reassignment in minors. You can read more about this law here.
For which a penalty was imposed on the bookstore
“In an investigation launched in response to a public interest complaint, the Pest District Administration found that the book was being sold as a storybook, but in the administration’s view the distributor had not clearly indicated that the stories in the book depicted patterns of behavior gender roles, “the authority points to the Delphi portal.
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