General discussion of moderation procedures - Part οκτώ

This discussion began here. So please explain why it's okay to compare gays to animals at this forum.Nothing against you personally, omni, but right now you're in the position of defending what I consider the indefensible. When an insult against an entire group of people is that crystal clear it should be unacceptable.

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W.W.E.D.?

in the thread I linked above, holmes wrote me:

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I don't want you getting mad at me, but I would like to calm you down...

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I'm perfectly calm, holmes, and I'm not mad at you.

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...the request for such rights is fundamentally the same.

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No, it's not. Assuming the right to marry a consenting human adult is not the same as assuming the right to marry something or someone that can't give consent. To do that you're assuming the right to exercise the rights of someone else. That's quite a bit more than asserting your own right to consent to a legal contract.

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On the flipside, as soon as you demand that he should take your feelings of how relationships should be judged

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I'm not asking anything of the sort. I'm simply asking to not be compared to animals. And any way you slice it, saying that gays shouldn't be allowed to marry cuz we wouldn't allow people to marry animals is a comparison of gays to animals. No two ways about it.

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W.W.E.D.?

Chiroptera writes me:

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He takes the typical view that the argument for gay marriage consists of "If it makes someone happy they should be allowed to do it,"

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But who made that argument? I checked upthread and schraf didn't seem to be making it.

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W.W.E.D.?

I understand you, Omni, but I can remember being nearly suspended more than once over the years here for making insulting statements about christians, statements that weren't necessarily aimed at one particular member. I also tend to agree with jar's point, but I think that when an insult like that appears, a counter-insult should be expected, and if you'll look back you'll see that I made one. I didn't get suspended for it, so at least at this moment I'm not raging mad about anything.

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W.W.E.D.?

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It is ridiculous to accuse NJ of any sort of comparison between humans and animals...

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Why, when that's exactly what he did?

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I read his remark as the standard position all of us take who oppose gay marriage.

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Which is the problem, as I see it. In 1900, you might have gotten away with saying that if we let blacks vote, next thing you know we'll be letting monkeys vote. And it would have made as much sense. After all, you're not comparing blacks to monkeys, you're saying that once you start letting someone other than white men vote, you've changed our entire democratic system into something it was never intended to be.

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W.W.E.D.?

Not just that, I asked him if he was stupid.

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Since you've chosen to reiterate your argument here, I'll address a couple points I didn't get a chance to before.AdminPD might have been trying to be fair but the attempt fell short. She accepted the drivel that nemesis_juggernaut offered as an apology. He only apologized for "confusion", not for the insult. In his "apology", he said: Checking my trusty American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Third Edition ©1996, I find that the very first definition listed for 'relative' runs thus: Therefore, gay marriage is "connected or related" to marriage between a woman and a dog, according to nemesis_juggernaut. So rather than apologizing he instead repeated the insult.Senator Rick Santorum has been rightly condemned by almost everyone who isn't a far-right fundie dolt for making this exact same argument.I haven't called for anyone to be suspended over this and, quite frankly, I think that if you hadn't jumped in it would have all been over after a few posts. I only wanted to make the point that such arguments are unacceptable to decent, thinking people, and in so doing to separate those decent, thinking people from, well, others.

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W.W.E.D.?

I would like to add my voice to those protesting Faith's suspension. I've looked into the posts that drew Admin's ire and I suppose I can understand a stiff suspension, especially if it's true this isn't the first time the problem has surfaced.I think Faith is about the most valuable creo we have on this forum, not least of all because I think she's been very fair as an admin. I think she's been both more active and more fair than anyone expected, and the fact that she's a creo I think helps this forum to establish a reputation for generally even-handed moderation.Please reconsider this.

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I pretty much agree with everything AdminPD said, except the part about nemjug apologizing. He didn't. And I'm not insisting on anything, I'm just pointing it out.

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AdminPD writes me:

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You demand an apology and he says he gave one.

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Just to be sure, I don't think I ever demanded anything. I'm not even sure I requested an apology, and it's quite clear that one has not been offered.When I first spoke up I said I thought that a comparison like that ought to be out-of-bounds here, but later agreed with jar that it's best to let people like nemjug show themselves for the bigots they are. From that point, all I wanted to do was highlight the insult and to point out that what some people seemed to feel was an "apology" was no apology at all and that in fact this "apology" did nothing more than repeat the insult.And no, I don't have any illusion that I'm going to get any more of an "apology" from nemjug. I never expected one to begin with, because it's been my experience that bigots never apologize unless they're forced to, and when they're forced to the apology is meaningless.Other than refering to nemjug's statement as an "apology", I don't see where you've done anything wrong and I have no ill will toward you.

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W.W.E.D.?