WASHINGTON (WBBM NEWSRADIO) - Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) wanted to show his colleagues what’s being done in Illinois to stop book bans.
Illinois Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias, who spearheaded a new state law, was one of the witnesses Tuesday as Washington was treated to a reading by U.S. Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) of a gay encounter in a challenged book.
“The words you spoke are disturbing, especially coming out of your mouth,” quipped Giannoulias, the state’s librarian-in-chief. “But we are not advocating for kids to read porn.”
Challenged by Kennedy, Giannoulias said the point is that parents should not be able to dictate what other parents’ kids can and cannot read.
Emily Knox, a professor of library and information sciences at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, described what you could find on a banned-books list:
“Books that we consider to be diverse: about anybody who is not white, heterosexual, male; books that are about LGBTQIA people, about people of color.” Knox stated.
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