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.”
Would you look at, the Bible is missing from their evidence of sexually explicit books read to children. All the prof you need that this has nothing to do with child safety
They are suspiciously silent about violence and gore.
Apparently understanding procreation exists is more dangerous than a heaping helping of the ol’ ultraviolence.
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.
Attention everyone: Your mom and your dad had the sex, thats how you even exist. Some of them had a lot of sex. Some even had sex with other people.
Censorship is required for effective brainwashing. Fuck autoritarians, not in the fun way.
IVF. I can honestly tell my children that their mother and I were just holding hands when she got pregnant.
Why are these people so obsessed about sex and moreover want to control sex for other people? They should seek therapy.
These people are wild. American first and freedom of speach, then something says something they don’t like and its ban this, make this illegal.
So you want elementary schools to have sexually explicit books in their libraries? Do you have kids of your own?
“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.”
I have a now 6th grader and it’s called parenting. I decide what is appropriate and not appropriate for my child. Not someone else.
I have a kid of my own. I want her to have access to all kinds of book content, sexual or not.
Sexual content in books is not going to ruin children. The vast majority are mature enough to handle it and it will more often than not help teach them to navigate the real world with more nuance than they would otherwise.
It can give words to the actions and feelings they come across, say for example, when a child is sexually assaulted and isn’t aware that it’s wrong, so they don’t speak up about it.
The books are not the problem. Books are never the problem and banning them is a huge infringement of the government on people’s freedom.
This is Lemmy. Of course they don’t have kids. Most of these people are severely emotionally stunted teenagers going through a Che Guevara phase.
