Banning books: a fool's solution

As I browsed the news releases today, I came across a story in the Chicago Sun-Times regarding another attempted book banning.  While I'm not writing specifically to address this story, it's a good starting point to understand how someone who has a position on a school board might think that banning a book is an acceptable thing to do.

Most "book banning" attempts rest on the idea that the overall value of a book to the education of a child is based on the so-called moral content of the most offensive moment in that book.  So people read Beloved and focus in on the sexual portions, ignoring the overall message of the book (and, to be fair, I don't like Beloved all that much, but I think that it has a place in the modern school curriculum).  People focus on the violence in The Things They Carried and ignore the poignant messages that the novel has to offer (and I do like that book a lot).  Many of the people involved in book bannings approach such actions from a religious perspective, claiming that exposure to such material is immoral.

To these people I cite portions of Exekiel 20:8, 17-22 as quoted from Bible.org:

"She did not abandon the prostitution she had practiced in Egypt; for in
her youth men had sex with her, fondled her virgin breasts, and
ravished her...

The Babylonians crawled into bed with her. They defiled her with their lust; after she was defiled by them, she became disgusted with them.

When she lustfully exposed her nakedness, I was disgusted with her, just as I had been disgusted with her sister.

Yet she increased her prostitution, remembering the days of her youth when she engaged in prostitution in the land of Egypt.

She lusted after their genitals – as large as those of donkeys, and their seminal emission was as strong as that of stallions.

This is how you assessed the obscene conduct of your youth, when the Egyptians fondled your nipples and squeezed your young breasts."

Even the primary text that guides Christian moral behavior in this country (I raise this point presupposing the fact that moral objections to content in books is coming largely from a religious moral perspective) could be brought up for banning on the grounds that sections of it are salacious. In fact, given this passage without context to a "pro-banning" school board member, I'll wager that he/she would suggest that it be banned (until informed of the title, of course).

If people accept the Bible as an ethical text despite all of the sexuality and violence within it, why can't we apply the same standard to "lay" literature?