Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) shocked congressional witnesses Tuesday when he used his allotted time during a Senate hearing on "book bans" to read aloud an excerpt from two often-challenged books that contain graphic depictions of anal sex.

Kennedy read portions of Genderqueer by Maia Kobabe and All Boys Aren't Blue by George Johnson during a hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee on "Book Bans: Examining How Censorship Limits Liberty and Literature." The passages the senator read contained graphic and sexually explicit depictions of anal and oral sex between gay characters.

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In response to Kennedy's reading of the graphic material, Illinois Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias said the content the senator had read was "disturbing."

"With all due respect, senator, the words you spoke are disturbing, especially coming out of your mouth is very disturbing," Giannoulias said after Kennedy had finished reading the two excerpts.

The two books read by the Louisiana senator were, according to the American Library Association, the two most "challenged" books of 2022. Both books were challenged because they have "LGBTQIA+ content" and are "claimed to be sexually explicit."

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Kennedy repeatedly asked Giannoulias, who had spent most of the hearing advocating for librarians to have the right to decide what is in libraries, what libraries should do about books such as Genderqueer and All Boys Aren't Blue.

"We're not advocating for kids to read porn," Giannoulias said. "We are advocating for random parents not to have the ability, under the guise of keeping kids safe, to try and challenge the world view of every single manner on these issues."