I suppose it was meant to be a gotcha moment — Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., reading sexually explicit passages aloud to a clearly hot-and-bothered Senate Judiciary Committee.

Illinois Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias had the floor, testifying during the “Book Bans: Examining How Censorship Limits Liberty and Literature” hearing, and promoting a new Illinois law that prohibits state funding for any library that bans books for “partisan or doctrinal” reasons.

The American Library Association documented 1,269 demands to censor library books and resources in 2022 — almost double the number of book ban attempts in 2021 and the highest number recorded since the group started compiling censorship data more than 20 years ago.

“The concept and practice of banning books contradicts the very essence of what our country stands for and what our democracy was founded on,” said Giannoulias, who serves as Illinois’ state librarian and is also a member of the Chicago Public Library board. “It also defies what education is all about: teaching our children to think for themselves.”

When it was Kennedy’s turn to speak, he narrated some excerpts from “All Boys Aren’t Blue” and “Gender Queer,” two books frequently banned for their sexually explicit LGBTQ content.

The words “strap-on harness” appeared in Kennedy’s speech, and you can Google it if you want to know the rest.

(Choose your search terms wisely. Your algorithms are watching. Also, while you’re online, check out some of the Twitter responses to Kennedy’s recitation. “My family reading my texts aloud after I die” was one of my favorites.)

Anyway. Maybe those of us following along at home were supposed to clutch our pearls at the notion of young adults reading about *that* kind of sex, as opposed to the heterosexual kind that’s baked into every part of our culture and leveraged to sell everything from hamburgers to bottled water to cologne.

(It should be noted that student Cameron Samuels, who attended the hearing, testified that the “All Boys Aren’t Blue” passage read aloud by Kennedy depicted an abuse scene. “It’s not erotic,” Samuels said. That nuance may have been lost in the senator’s reading.)

Maybe we were supposed to view Kennedy and his ilk as our white knights, saving our children from the wages of sin and saving us from having to broach uncomfortable topics at the dinner table.

Maybe those of us who oppose book bans with every fiber of our being were supposed to switch teams, now that we heard what really goes on inside library books.

Maybe. All I kept thinking was: Stop changing the subject.

Stop pretending our problem right now is young people finding too much belonging, too much empathy, too much understanding.

Stop pretending that leaving LGBTQ+ young people on the margins, that ostracizing them for who they are and who they love, that banning their stories, that pretending they don’t exist will prepare them — or their straight peers — for full, whole, healthy, harmonious lives.

Stop pretending book bans are all about sex. An elementary school in Florida banned Amanda Gorman’s inaugural poem, “The Hill We Climb,” a few months ago. A school board in Tennessee banned the Holocaust novel “Maus” because it contains swear words.

Stop pretending we can solve the most pressing, dire issues of our time — the climate crisis, the opioid overdose epidemic, gun violence, the recent doubling of childhood poverty, the mental health crisis among young people — without including all sorts of voices, stories, perspectives, ideas, experiences and wisdom in public discourse and policy making.

Stop trying to shock us with sex toys. Kids are being slaughtered at school with assault rifles. We live in a perpetual state of shock. Saying “strap-on harness” in a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing isn’t shocking; it’s theater. I love theater, but that’s not what we elect representatives for.

We elect them to solve problems, not distract us from them. Book bans are a distraction. They’re a distraction that chips away at the ideals we were founded to uphold — free thought, free expression, free speech. And they’re a distraction from becoming a more perfect, more just, more loving, more accepting version of ourselves.

“If the book banners care to,” Giannoulias testified, “they can go to our libraries and check out the Federalist Papers, the U.S. Constitution and even Supreme Court cases on the First Amendment. What they will learn is that our democracy depends on the marketplace of ideas.

“That marketplace of ideas will not function if we ban books,” he continued, “because we will be banning ideas and preventing our children from thinking for themselves and having the ability to debate and learn and understand different perspectives. We will be banning knowledge, culture, empathy, understanding and diverse and differing worldviews.”

All things we need more than ever.

Join the Heidi Stevens Balancing Act Facebook group, where she continues the conversation around her columns and hosts occasional live chats.

Twitter @heidistevens13