# I am SPARTACUS -- I mean msmith537 **URL:** \ **Category:** About This Message Board\ **Created:** [September 2, 2017, 2:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-am-spartacus-i-mean-msmith537/795294 "2017-09-02T02:16:23Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 14\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2017, 12:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-am-spartacus-i-mean-msmith537/795294/41 "2017-09-03T00:42:34Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > But there are other sentence structures that can be employed to insult someone Sure, but you should be able to restate that sentence structure as a “You are …” statement for it to be an insult. I don’t see how it can be an insult unless someone says “You are …” or in some other way implies a “You are …” statement. ---
**Author:** ![billfish678](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7bcc69/32.png) [@billfish678](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/billfish678)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2017, 12:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-am-spartacus-i-mean-msmith537/795294/42 "2017-09-03T00:44:31Z")
It is coming. Been predicted long before I ever graduated high school and every year since then… “Offensive” speach as an actual offense. Actual adults could actually take as well as they could give… Folks on the SDMB…well, they might be the last bastion… ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2017, 12:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-am-spartacus-i-mean-msmith537/795294/43 "2017-09-03T00:47:08Z")
> [@Riemann](#): > > Stop making inflammatory predictions. Fire season is coming early this year. ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2017, 2:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-am-spartacus-i-mean-msmith537/795294/44 "2017-09-03T02:16:54Z")
> [@Colibri](#): > > My mother is a devout Catholic, and I have other relatives who are nuns. They believe on religious grounds that homosexual behavior is immoral. I also have several family members who are gay. I know for a fact that my mother loves them deeply, and she has never shown the least bit of bigotry with respect to their gay friends (who are frequent guests at her house, attending her birthday parties and coming over for Christmas dinner). People are more complex than you acknowledge. I think one can acknowledge that there is a broad spectrum of attitudes on this issue, just as there is with racism. The question I would ask is whether those with the kind of benevolent tolerance that you describe are likely to post tirades on message boards railing against those groups, as was the case here. If not, then I don’t think that’s a relevant defense. The poster essentially self-identified as intolerant towards gays, explicitly stating they practice “sexual perversion” in a tirade in which he calls them out as part of the cause of the deterioration of society. > [@Asimovian](#): > > I don’t feel that **msmith537** ’s paraphrase was a fair one. **Flyer** ’s post displayed a disgust with the behavior of a group of people. It did not state that those people should be referred to by an ugly slur. The assumption that the first probably means the second is not the issue. You don’t get to make that accusation outside of the Pit. Is it the use of that particular word that was the problem? What if the putative translation had been “I hate homosexuals”? Would that have been OK, or is the word “hate” also problematic? What if the translation had been “I have no tolerance for homosexuality”? What if any of those had been preceded by "You appear to be saying that … "? Because it seems to me that they all say basically the same thing, and the thing that they say was established by the poster himself. I know we won’t agree on this, but I guess my problem ultimately comes down to the belief that self-evident truths shouldn’t be censored, just like we acknowledge here that “you’re a liar” isn’t permissible, but “that’s not true” _must_ be permissible or discussion wouldn’t be possible. At the very least I would have hoped that this could be acknowledged as a gray area deserving of a note rather than a warning. The point that has been made several times here by several supporters of the warning, the way I read it, is along the lines that **mssmith** was guilty of passing judgment in an insulting manner on a poster who might have meant something more innocuous. But when I see someone use a term like “sexual perversion” in this context, any notion of benevolence or innocent intent goes out the window. I am reminded of the case of Alan Turing, regarded by many to be the father of modern computer science and AI, whose cryptography work at Bletchley Park is thought by many to have shortened World War II by two years and saved as many as fourteen million lives. Yet despite this, Britain – which we often think of as the birthplace of civilized enlightenment – convicted him of “gross indecency” for being homosexual, ruined his life, and threatened to throw him in prison unless he agreed to a horrific series of hormone injections (which he did, to avoid prison) intended to cure his “sexual perversion”. Two years later, he was found dead in what an inquest ruled to be suicide. And suicides are prevalent among young people today who are ridiculed and taunted for their sexual identity. So, no, there is no innocence here, and the purveyors of harmful bigotry deserve to be called out on it. It’s not often I disagree with the mods here, but I just think the warning was excessively harsh in the circumstances. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2017, 5:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-am-spartacus-i-mean-msmith537/795294/45 "2017-09-03T05:12:20Z")
If you’re looking for bright line, you know the mods aren’t going to give you one. I’d say that **smith’s** post was clearly over the line, wherever that line happens to be, because of both the “hate” and “fags” in the paraphrase. You “hate” those people, and I bet you call them “fags”, too. Eliminate either one and it becomes less inflammatory, and remove them both and it approaches being innocuous. I think the take-away should be: if you feel you must paraphrase someone, err on the generous side rather than on the inflammatory side. Give the poster the benefit of the doubt to explain himself further. ---
**Author:** ![Gukumatz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/74df32/32.png) [@Gukumatz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gukumatz)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2017, 6:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-am-spartacus-i-mean-msmith537/795294/46 "2017-09-03T06:56:21Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > If you’re looking for bright line, you know the mods aren’t going to give you one. I’d say that **smith’s** post was clearly over the line, wherever that line happens to be, because of both the “hate” and “fags” in the paraphrase. You “hate” those people, and I bet you call them “fags”, too. Eliminate either one and it becomes less inflammatory, and remove them both and it approaches being innocuous. I think the take-away should be: if you feel you must paraphrase someone, err on the generous side rather than on the inflammatory side. Give the poster the benefit of the doubt to explain himself further. And failing even that, the BBQ Pit is where people can call someone out for using weasel words - if that’s what people think they’re doing. ---
**Author:** ![tim314](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tim314/32/3468_2.png) [@tim314](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tim314)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2017, 1:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-am-spartacus-i-mean-msmith537/795294/47 "2017-09-03T13:06:49Z")
> [@Colibri](#): > > As I’ve already said, even without the inflammatory language the paraphrase was inaccurate. Disapproval of behavior does not equate to personal hatred. The view that you can separate “being gay” from “behaving as if you are gay” is a lot more controversial than you seem to think. To me, it’s no more legitimate than saying “Well, I don’t hate Black people, I just don’t like the behavior of Black people who are unwilling to bleach their skin, and yet still choose to be seen in public.” (In both cases, the “behavior” being objected to is simply being who you are while still participating in aspects of life everyone else takes for granted.) I realize this isn’t the forum to debate whose view on this is _correct_. My point is that the claim that it’s an inaccurate paraphrase is highly subjective. There’s a widely-held worldview under which it is, and a widely-held worldview under which it isn’t. Of course moderation is inherently somewhat subjective, but that doesn’t mean other worldviews besides the moderator’s own are irrelevant, given that a lot of moderation does seem to turn, at least somewhat, on the moderator’s reading of the poster’s intent. If there’s a rule “Don’t deliberately inaccurately paraphrase other posters”, then the subjectivity of “inaccurate” in this case is relevant to the question of what’s “deliberate”. (I hope the rule isn’t simply “Don’t paraphrase other posters in a way that a moderator would find inaccurate,” since that amounts to asking people to be mind readers.) For what it’s worth, I have no objection to a rule “Don’t attribute slurs to other posters unless they’ve actually used them” – which seems relatively unambiguous. ---
**Author:** ![watchwolf49](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e9c0ed/32.png) [@watchwolf49](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/watchwolf49)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2017, 1:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-am-spartacus-i-mean-msmith537/795294/48 "2017-09-03T13:52:14Z")
> [@Riemann](#): > > That’s inflammatory punctuation. Droll … **Riemann** … very droll … ---
**Author:** ![Guinastasia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guinastasia/32/5751_2.png) [@Guinastasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guinastasia)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2017, 4:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-am-spartacus-i-mean-msmith537/795294/49 "2017-09-03T16:45:41Z")
> [@Peter\_Morris](#): > > You are a person that uses terms such as _fag_. Well, that depends. Are we talking about gays, or loud obnoxious bikers? ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2017, 8:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-am-spartacus-i-mean-msmith537/795294/50 "2017-09-05T08:59:46Z")
> [@tim314](#): > > The view that you can separate “being gay” from “behaving as if you are gay” is a lot more controversial than you seem to think. To me, it’s no more legitimate than saying “Well, I don’t hate Black people, I just don’t like the behavior of Black people who are unwilling to bleach their skin, and yet still choose to be seen in public.” (In both cases, the “behavior” being objected to is simply being who you are while still participating in aspects of life everyone else takes for granted.) QFT. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2017, 6:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-am-spartacus-i-mean-msmith537/795294/51 "2017-09-05T18:14:40Z")
But it should be noted that **Flyer** never used the word “hate” or insinuated that he hated gays. Some folks seem to not even notice they are making that assumption. ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2017, 6:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-am-spartacus-i-mean-msmith537/795294/52 "2017-09-05T18:41:54Z")
No, he just said that perverts are destroying the country. Clearly no hate there. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2017, 9:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-am-spartacus-i-mean-msmith537/795294/53 "2017-09-05T21:33:20Z")
> [@Miller](#): > > No, he just said that perverts are destroying the country. Clearly no hate there. There might very well be hate. But there might not. Which do you think a poster should assume when responding, if he should assume at all? ---
**Author:** ![Irishman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/b487fb/32.png) [@Irishman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Irishman)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2017, 12:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-am-spartacus-i-mean-msmith537/795294/54 "2017-09-07T00:34:06Z")
> [@wolfpup](#): > > Is it the use of that particular word that was the problem? What if the putative translation had been “I hate homosexuals”? Would that have been OK, or is the word “hate” also problematic? What if the translation had been “I have no tolerance for homosexuality”? What if any of those had been preceded by "You appear to be saying that … "? It seems to me “I hate homosexuals” would have been an acceptable paraphrase, as would “I have no tolerance for homosexuals” or “I hate gays”. It was injecting the hate word “fags” that got the warning. IANAmod. If you feel you absolutely must restate someone’s opinion as “I hate fags”, do it in the Pit. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-am-spartacus-i-mean-msmith537/795294.md?page=2)