Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) went viral this week after he read some hardcore pornography aloud during a Senate hearing. That doesn’t exactly happen every Tuesday.

But the Louisiana senator was participating in a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing titled "Book Bans: Examining How Censorship Limits Liberty and Literature," and he wanted to dispel any illusions about what, exactly, was up for debate. So, Kennedy read out loud passages from books including Gender Queer and All Boys Aren’t Blue that describe, in great detail, anal sex.

This stunt shocked the audience, with one witness calling it “very disturbing.” But it effectively raised an important question: If it’s too outrageous to read these books out loud in a room full of adults, why on Earth are they freely available in some middle school classrooms ? And why are liberals and Democrats fighting their removal in the name of “gay rights” and “opposing book bans”?

“Politicians have targeted books that include LGBTQ subject matter,” Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) lamented in his opening statement. “One of four banned books features LGBT characters and themes.”

“No parent should have the right to tell another parent’s child what they can or cannot read in school or at home,” he continued. “Every student deserves access to books that reflect their experiences and help them understand who they are. These efforts to ban books violate our most cherished principles as Americans and betray our values as a nation. We must protect our students and their freedom to read and learn.”

It’s absolutely true that, in some cases, the push to remove certain books from school libraries or curricula has gone too far. For example, graphic books about the Holocaust shouldn’t be removed, as some have tried to do , because educating young people about the horrors of totalitarianism absolutely does require exposing them to it.

But it’s also true that in none of these cases are books really being “banned.” Any parent can still go on Amazon and buy their child any book they want. Yet school libraries and curricula inherently have to choose some books and exclude others. This curation always happens. What’s happening now is that many parents got a closer look at their children’s education during the COVID-19 shutdowns and “virtual learning” and realized that many of these decisions were being made in ways they found objectionable.

Hence the “unprecedented wave” of “book ban” attempts in 2022. Not all of these efforts to remove specific books are justified or reasonable, to be clear. Many aren’t. Each case depends on individual factors such as what the exact content is, what age level the library is for, and so on.

But there’s nothing illegitimate, as Democrats seem to suggest, about the process of parents trying to influence the curation decisions made by school librarians and administrators. After all, they work for us. They use our money to buy these books, and parents have every right to have a say in their children’s education.

There’s also nothing inherently homophobic or “anti-LGBT,” despite the spin of Durbin and many others, about the push to remove certain “books with LGBT themes.” At least in the case of some of the most popularly challenged books such as This Book is Gay and Gender Queer, they are not merely being challenged for having a gay character or depicting gay parents, or so on. (To whatever extent that’s happening, it’s absolutely wrong.)

Many of these books are being challenged because they are extremely sexually graphic.

For example, This Book is Gay includes discussion of fetishes that involve eating feces and urinating on your partner. It also includes a how-to guide instructing readers how to use sex hook-up apps that are meant for adults only. (Why would someone of school age need to know how to use Grindr?) Meanwhile, Gender Queer includes depictions of a simulated blow job and much more.

Suffice it to say that parents who object to these books being given to children via middle or high school libraries aren’t necessarily objecting because they are LGBT-related but because they are explicit or even pornographic. Some people could be motivated by bigotry, but while inner motivations are impossible to divine, there’s absolutely nothing inherently bigoted about these objections at all.

It should be up to parents to discuss these sensitive topics with their children. It’s perfectly fair to demand that schools not expose young children to such explicit content before their parents decide they’re ready, let alone use deeply ideologically liberal works to do so.

This isn’t really “book banning.” What’s more, while each case may or may not be justified depending on the individual facts, it’s not inherently illegitimate. And it’s certainly not homophobic.

On the contrary, gay people were unfairly maligned for decades as having nefarious intentions toward children. Now, liberals are playing into that baseless stereotype by defending wildly explicit sexual content in schools in the name of “gay rights.” If you ask me, that’s what is really hurting the LGBT community right now.

Brad Polumbo ( @Brad_Polumbo ) is an independent journalist, co-founder of BASEDPolitics , and Washington Examiner contributor.