A Catholic Church in the United Kingdom has banned an award-winning gay author from visiting and speaking at two schools near London.
The Archdiocese of Southwark cancelled the talks by young adult fiction writer Simon James Green at the two schools. Green was scheduled to speak at The John Fisher School in Purley, South London on March 7 and at St John’s Primary School in Gravesend, Kent on March 9.
Online news website Inews reported that Dr Simon Hughes, director of education at the Archdiocese of Southwark, also removed a number of members of the governing board, who had supported the school’s decision to invite the author.
This followed a campaign by a Catholic website claiming that boys were being “misled into accepting, as normal and good, sexual behaviour which is condemned by Christ’s Church”.You can’t be made gay by reading about gay characters in books.