Venice conservative mayor Luigi Brugnaro banned a couple of children's books that feature lesbian and gay parents from preschool libraries in a bid to promote diversity and combat prejudice within the preschools in the place, The Guardian reports.

According to New York Times, there were actually 49 books all in all, bound to face the chopping block. These books had stories about kids with disabilities and talked about religious and racial discrimination.

But after a major backlash from the residents as well as publishers, authors, librarian associations along with Amnesty International, Brugnaro shaved his list to two fairytale books, which told the stories of respective same-sex couples who reached their happy ever after.

As per the aforementioned site, many believe that this ban shows how Italy still fails or chooses not to transform itself into a "multicultural and multifaceted society." Same-sex marriage is yet to be legalized in the place and only Rome and Milan allow civil union registries, but the rights remain very limited.

Brugnaro said in a statement that the book ban was a response to the "cultural arrogance" of the administration that came before his. In fact, axing such tomes was part of his electoral pledge and that this is him fulfilling what he promised to do in "[looking] after the city."

"That's just not admissible," the mayor said. "Of course I protested. What would happen if my 3-year-old daughter came home and asked me, Where is the other daddy?" He then went on to say that "these books risk confusing children."

Meanwhile, council member for civil rights in the previous administration, Camilla Seibezzi said, "This incident says so much about this country." She worked to promote the said books 18 months back and was easily made the target of death threats and protests.

Shortly after hearing about the ban, Elton John joined the protest and shared a piece of his mind via social media. He posted on his Instagram the cover of Todd Parr's "The Family Book," which he described as "one of the Furnish-John family's favourite storybooks."

 Here is one of the Furnish-John family's favourite storybooks. It champions an all-inclusive world where families come in all shapes, sizes and colours. And most importantly, that families are about love. Our boys adore it. And in the opposing corner we have Luigi Brugnaro, the extremely silly looking mayor of Venice. He's stupidly chosen to politicise children's books by banning titles that touch on same sex families living happily ever after. So instead of encouraging a world based on inclusiveness, tolerance and love, he's championing a future society that's divisive and fosters ignorance. Beautiful Venice is indeed sinking, but not as fast as the boorishly bigoted Brugnaro. #ShareTheLove

A photo posted by Elton John (@eltonjohn) on Aug 14, 2015 at 4:02am PDT

He then elaborated in the caption of the photo: "It champions an all-inclusive world where families come in all shapes, sizes and colours. And most importantly, that families are about love. Our boys adore it."

He continued on and called out the Venice mayor, saying:

"And in the opposing corner we have Luigi Brugnaro, the extremely silly looking mayor of Venice. He's stupidly chosen to politicise children's books by banning titles that touch on same-sex families living happily ever after. So instead of encouraging a world based on inclusiveness, tolerance and love, he's championing a future society that's divisive and fosters ignorance. Beautiful Venice is indeed sinking, but not as fast as the boorishly bigoted Brugnaro."