NO Dogs 🐕 No Gays🚫 Guest House in Italy
 |
| Nazi Round Ups separating Jews from others: Because not all people are human? |
The owner of a guesthouse has sparked outrage in Italy after refusing to host a gay couple saying "we don't accept gays and animals".
A gay couple from Naples said they were shocked to be told that they were not welcome at Ciufo guest house near Vibo Valentia, in the southern region of Calabria, because the owners "believe in traditional families".
"It was like getting a silo of ice cold water," Gennaro Casalino told Arcigay, Italy's largest gay organisation.
"In my mind I could see the infamous images of Nazi signs outside of shops saying 'forbidden entry to dogs and Jews'."But It has been 70 years since then and this cannot be ignored."
Filippo Mondella, the owner of the guest house, told Radio Capital that he wrote the message whilst driving and he did not intend to offend anyone when he told the couple: "This is important and I don't want to appear like a troglodyte, but we don't accept gays and dogs."
Mr Mondella explained that he did not mean to put gay people and dogs in the same category and it was a punctuation mistake.
He also defended his position: "[The guest house] is not a public structure, it's a private house. We are Catholic, devout Christians [...] I have nothing against it, for me they are normal people, but objectively we prefer to keep our faith."
The episode, which the Naples section of Arcigay called "a serious case of discrimination and homophobia", was also con condemned by local authorities.
"We completely distance ourselves from this," Giulia Russo, the mayor of Ricadi, said.
"In Ricadi we are civil and evolved people and such discrimination is not acceptable in 2017."
Comments