Freedom of Thought

[Jonathan Whatley]

No book should ever be banned. Opposing arguments or discussions of why a thought is wrong should be welcome. 

The whims of mob rule are never creative.

So then you are for allowing 2nd and 3rd graders to read Playbook magazines in school?  Where is the line if there is no line?

You won't define a line because then you will realize how rediculous your position is.

No one reasonably defines disallowing third graders from viewing sexually explicit photos in school as a "book ban." That's a "book ban" only by the most strained technical definition.

In a 1964 case weighing free speech against obscenity claims, Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart famously wrote "I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description ['hard-core pornography'], and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that."

The Handmaid's Tale is on one side of an obvious line (especially for high school and above), while Playboy is on the other.