Great question! Because books like Catcher in the Rye get flagged for sexual content all the time.

Unfortunately, I don't remember the name of the book. It was one I was not familiar with.

The discussion noted that the book discussed using "toys". They also noted that there was an add for buying sex toys as part of the book. These are elements that really caught my attention.

I have a hard time seeing most parents in the US being ok with this material being put in front of kids who are 5-10 years old.

“I don’t really recall but it was some terrible thing like giving sex toys to kids but I don’t remember really. I can definitely see why they’re doing this though!”

So what you're saying is, rather than have actual data or even a single concrete anecdote, you're happy just passing along word-of-mouth gossip when we already know that the people pushing for these laws are happy outright lying about their intent.

The thing about anecdotes about schools is that you actually can find examples of a lot of bad behavior—because there are lots and lots of schools and lots and lots of teachers and sometimes those teachers are malicious or are catastrophically stupid, just like any other group of people that large.

But when you dig a little farther most of that stuff's usually handled just fine at the school or district level. There's very little justification for involving state or even county level government in addressing things like inappropriate lessons or content, because they do happen but are not an actual systemic problem because they're already dealt with by the existing, very-local systems.

Just wanted to thank you for this astute point.

Popular science magazine has it's back several pages full of ads for sketchy dick pills, "romantic couple" porn videos, and other sex services. My mother got really upset but I just wanted to read about the B2 bomber so she pretty quickly realized that it was a non-issue.

The hilarious part is that young teens will find pretty much anything arousing anyway. When I was that age, one of the books in the Ender's Game series involved a weird scene where someone attempts to essentially seduce Ender. You can bet I re-read that scene a hundred times. Or a scene in a harry potter book where a couple young teens talk about making out.

If you want to prevent any "sexualization" content from reaching your young readers, you pretty much have to limit them to Go Dog Go.