> It's a matter of which books. Right, but what I'm saying is that this argument is complete nonsense. "We censor some things but not other things" -- yeah, th

> It's a matter of which books. Right, but what I'm saying is that this argument is complete nonsense. "We censor some things but not other things" -- yeah, that's how the 1st Amendment works. It has limitations and they're established in law, and it is useful to try and figure out when something is still stepping over a line because it is possible to step over the line. Of course, both Democrats and Republicans are often hypocritical about free speech issues. That is to be expected. But it adds nothing to the conversation to say "some censorship is allowed." Okay, some censorship is allowed. So? Sometimes Democrats are hypocritical about speech, and that means... what we're all going to be hypocritical now? We're just going to have a field day with it, everybody ban anything they want? Is censorship that is (by your description) specifically designed to enforce religious adherence constitutional? That question doesn't go away just because we don't allow porn in the kids section of a library. This just seems so silly to me. Who looks at someone being hypocritical and says, "the answer to this is to have fewer objective standards so that it's even easier for hypocrites to abuse power?" > And yet, if they were to say an optional non-denominational prayer before the beginning of class, they would often risk be fired. SCOTUS has ruled that's OK. I think that's wrong but that's how that stands now. If you're referring to Abington v. Schempp, SCOTUS protections for retaliation in that area have never been weaker. But okay, let's talk about those boundaries. The Supreme Court has clearly ruled (recently) that it is illegal to fire a teacher over some religious speech, including specifically optional public prayers. So there does appear to be a boundary here between what the Supreme Court views as government censorship vs government compelled speech. I guarantee you the Supreme Court does not see that boundary as arbitrary. So we're back to the start. Some speech is protected, some isn't. But you can't act like this is arbitrary; pointing out that some speech is banned adds nothing to the conversation. And if your argument is that the Supreme Court believes that state-endorsement of Deism isn't protected, that's not really an argument in favor of religiously motivated book bans. > My point was, is a teacher permitted to perform speech that would attempt to solicit such a relationship Entering into a sexual relationship with a student is not speech.