Senator reads aloud from pornographic kids books at hearing

‘I got a new strap-on harness today. I can’t wait to put it on you.’ Not things you’d normally expect to hear from a senator (not during working hours, anyway). Certainly not things you’d want to stumble across in a children’s book. That’s why this reading of ‘All Boys Aren’t Blue’ and ‘Genderqueer’ from Republican senator John Kennedy was such an explosively viral moment of disturbing cringe. Kennedy read aloud from the books at a hearing to discuss whether or not the books should be available in school libraries. Yes, really. Surprising to no one, the Democrats were arguing in favor of these books being next to ‘The Very Hungry Caterpillar’ and ‘Let’s Learn About Oxbow Lakes’. Illinois Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias struggled to defend the books, admitting that the words were ‘shocking,’ but then implying that parents were bigots for objecting, then finally comparing the seminal tomes quoted above with ‘To Kill A Mockingbird’. We don’t remember Harper Lee’s classic having a strap-on scene, but maybe that’s just us.