A new report on so-called "book bans" from the American Library Association is drawing criticism from a prominent conservative education scholar who recently testified before a Senate committee on the topic of book bans.

The report from the ALA said that there have been "695 attempts to censor library materials" and that 1,915 "unique titles" have been challenged in school and public libraries across the country from Jan. 1 to Aug. 31. The ALA said this represents a 20% increase from 2022.

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“These attacks on our freedom to read should trouble every person who values liberty and our constitutional rights,” Deborah Caldwell-Stone, director of the ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom, said in a press release. “To allow a group of people or any individual, no matter how powerful or loud, to become the decision-maker about what books we can read or whether libraries exist, is to place all of our rights and liberties in jeopardy.”

But the so-called "book bans" are typically centered on books that contain gratuitous depictions of sexual behavior, Max Eden, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, told the Washington Examiner.

Eden, who in recent testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, read aloud a portion of a book that depicted sexually explicit themes, said challenges to books with pornographic themes by parents are "good and healthy." He then blasted the ALA and Emily Drabinski, the association's president.

Drabinski, who described herself as a “Marxist lesbian,” has become a favorite target of conservatives in recent months since she took over as ALA president. A number of state library associations, including Montana and Texas, have severed ties with the ALA over concerns about Drabinski’s leadership.

"The American Library Association is headed by a self-described Marxist who wants schools and libraries to be sites of socialist organizing," Eden said. "She promotes books that include depictions of boys masturbating into a bottle, where the last one has to drink it, on the grounds that such content is 'inclusive.' As the ALA’s Deborah Caldwell-Stone has essentially admitted, this is a propaganda campaign to rebrand sexually explicit content as 'diverse.'"

The most challenged books include All Boys Aren't Blue by George Johnson and Maia Kobabe's Gender Queer, both of which contains depictions of sex between gay characters.

Kobabe recently admitted that Gender Queer should not be read by children after Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) shocked witnesses when he read aloud a sexually explicit excerpt from the book during the same Senate hearing where Eden testified.

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Nevertheless, the ALA accused Iowa's Urbandale Community School District of banning the book when it removed it from school libraries.

"We should be far more concerned if parents weren’t objecting," Eden added.