(LifeSiteNews) — Senator JD Vance called Democrats “weird” for fighting to keep pornographic books available to kids in libraries.
President Trump’s running mate made the comments Saturday during a rally in Atlanta.
“We think it’s weird that Democrats want to put sexually explicit books in toddlers’ libraries,” Vance said. “We think it’s weird that the far-left wants to allow biological males to beat the living [expletive] out of women in boxing.”
This is likely in reference to an Algerian Olympic boxer who competes as a female, is listed as a female on a passport, but might have XY chromosomes.
“We think it’s weird for a presidential candidate to bail convicted murderers and rapists out of prison, and that’s what Kamala did,” Vance said.
While running for president in 2020, Harris promoted the Minnesota Freedom Fund, which aimed “to help bail Black Lives Matter rioters out of jail,” according to Fox News. The riots followed the May 2020 killing of a black man named George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police officers.
As noted by Fox News, a Minnesota affiliate reported in August 2020 that the fund “bailed out defendants from Twin Cities jails charged with murder, violent felonies, and sex crimes.”
— Matt Lamb (@MattLamb22) August 6, 2024
Soon after Trump selected the Ohio Republican to be his running mate, Democrats and their allies in the media quickly began parroting a talking point that Vance is “weird.”
Liberal groups and politicians have generally opposed limits on making pornographic books available to kids through schools and public libraries, accusing parental rights activists of supporting “book bans.”
In July, Harris appeared to invoke God as part of her opposition to the limits.
“Book bans in this year of our Lord 2024. Just think about it,” she said at a teachers union convention. “So, we want to ban assault weapons and they want to ban books. Can you imagine,” she asked, as reported by Education Week.
SUPERCUT!
Proof the entire Democrat-Media Complex outsources their brains to DNC talking-point writers #JDVanceIsWeird pic.twitter.com/ceN2qvIPTM
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) July 29, 2024
In many cases, states and local communities have moved to ensure children are not exposed to sexually explicit content by ensuring parents and other citizens can raise objections.
Legislation in Indiana, for example, allows citizens to file objections to books in school libraries that they find “obscene” or “harmful to minors,” as previously reported by LifeSiteNews. “The local school board would then have to review the request and discuss it at the next public school board meeting and establish an appeals process if it disagrees with the request,” LifeSiteNews reported.
School boards have even cut off speakers who were reading from the books in order to make a point – thus validating their concerns about the appropriateness of the materials.
However, a communications scholar who studies the news media has criticized the claims of widespread “book bans.”
“The major flaw in the argument warning about book bans is that the people who are questioning the content of a school curriculum or the children’s section of a public library aren’t really seeking to ‘ban’ books,” DePauw University Professor Jeffrey McCall wrote in The Hill last October. The issue is simply what is suitable for the intended audience of kids. Children are vulnerable in a broad sense. That’s why kids are already protected from many societal influences, let alone being prohibited from buying cigarettes, alcohol and so on.”
McCall pointed out that “[p]arents who want their kids exposed to certain kinds of sexualized or cultural messages can still acquire those books and read them to their kids as bedtime stories.”
However, there is no “‘right’ to have the taxpayer money of schools and public libraries used to put that content in front of other people’s kids and attempt to shut up opposing voices.”
He also pointed out there is always “discretion” in book choices made by “professional educators and librarians.”
In 2021 Vance told Crisis Magazine that he thinks pornography should be banned.
“I think the combination of porn, abortion have basically created a really lonely, isolated generation that isn’t getting married, they’re not having families, and they’re actually not even totally sure how to interact with each other,” he said.