A Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on book bans took a racy turn Tuesday, as Republican senators and a witness read scenes of various sexual content into the congressional record to defend the banning of multiple titles from U.S. schools.
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The hearing on book bans was called as multiple Republican-led states have made it easier for books to be challenged in classrooms and as school board meetings have been flooded with arguments on what is appropriate for children to read.
The American Library Association said the number of book challenges in the United States doubled between 2021 and 2022.
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Republicans and Democrats found common ground in agreeing there are books that are inappropriate for some children, but Democrats said the argument that all the books under discussion are sexually explicit is a scapegoat for the issue.
“No one is advocating for sexually explicit content to be available in an elementary school library or in [the] children’s section of the library,” Judiciary Chairman Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said. “That’s a distraction from the real challenge. I understand and respect that parents may choose to limit what their children read, especially at younger ages. My wife and I did. Others do, too. But no parent should have the right to tell another parent’s child what they can and cannot read in school or at home. Every student deserves access to books that reflect their experiences and help them better understand who they are.”
That’s something us Europeans find weird all the time. Splatterfest 9000 Ultra Bloody Gore edition is fine, but God forbid there is a literal mm of female areola in screen for a fraction of a second!
I like the glib answer that the USA was founded by religious nut jobs so uptight and conservative that they got kicked out of Europe for being so annoying - the puritans.
What’s amusing to me is that one of the stated reasons the religious nut jobs were persecuted was for their anti-war beliefs. Somehow that script got flipped.
