After some debate the management has decided to establish a new policy for “witnessing” (religious proselytizing), which attempts to balance the following considerations:
(1) Free speech is good.
(2) A lot of SDMB members (and some SDMB staff) would sooner put up with suppertime telemarketing calls than submit to witnessing.
(3) We don’t want to come across like Nero persecuting the Christians.
So here’s the policy, effective immediately:
a. Proselytizing and religious discussions generally (other than strictly factual inquiries) should be confined to the Great Debates forum. Proselytizing in other forums will be deleted.
b. In the Great Debates forum, proselytizing should be limited to threads started for that purpose or to which a discussion of religion and related matters has some relevance. Proselytizing inserted into inappropriate threads will be deleted. We reserve the right to limit what we consider redundant or excessive posts or threads along these lines.
I didn’t think there was anything to discuss, seeing as it is apparantly a done deal.
But … I welcome the day when I can find a debate board where there is no censorship of any kind. The idea that religious witness is so incredibly intolerable that it has to be officially corralled strikes me as absurd. I’m the very last person on earth to think that Chrisitan proselytizing, or any proselytizing, is a terrific thing. But hardly so deeply offensive that I must be shielded from it in a debate forum!
Stoidela, the whole point is that we don’t want to censor it, but we don’t want it to take over the board, either. So we assign it a place, and ask everybody to play by the rules so that we can all have fun here.
It’s not censorship to place time and place restrictions on something. Censorship would be to say it can’t be posted anywhere. That’s not what’s going on here.
Personally, I think the moderators have been extremely tolerant. If they were oppressive, dragonfly99 would be banned, and I just saw a new message from him. Of course I couldn’t understand it, but it was there.
The policy seems more insulting to the Teeming Millions than the Teeming Enraptured, implying as it does that readers are incapable of glancing at a post, getting the gist, and deciding whether or not to continue. After all, if they are reading this board at all they have resigned themselves to load times that sometimes are worth the wait, sometimes not.
It’s not “censorship” to ask people to put certain topics in certain categories – it’s courtesy and consideration for readers. It goes right along with assigning titles to the topics that describe what’s inside.
Freedom of speech must be accompanied by a freedom NOT to listen. I don’t want to censor Nazis or racist, but I don’t want to have to listen to them, or read their crap, either. If I know that a fascist is speaking on a street corner, I avoid that corner. If I know that someone is trying to convert me to their religion, I don’t go to that thread.
It really irks me – and this IS the BBQ pit – when people get all hot and bothered about the rights of free speech and the evils of censorship, without paying any attention to the rights of people not to be bothered.
There are plenty of other online arenas for jerks to spew forth their hate-mongering (in whatever form), our desire that to confine them to a certain forum is in no way an abridgment of their rights, nor even a discourtesy to them.
And which amendment would that be? The rights of free speech sorta cancel out any Not Bother rights. You said it yourself, the right you DO have is to kepp on walking, reading, going.
And I’m no Christian, but I would hardly call the sort of witnessing we’ve seen around here anything like hate-mongering.
Man… I have always been the most vocal anti-Christian you’d care to meet, but you guys make me look weak. What is up with that?
<< And I’m no Christian, but I would hardly call the sort of witnessing we’ve seen around here anything like hate-mongering. >>
Fair enough. I bring a fair amount of personal emotional baggage to the topic of attempts at religious conversion. My point was that we have set up forums for certain topics to make it easier on the reader, and this is not censorship in any way whatsoever. The library categorizes fiction as different from nonfiction, and puts the fiction in alphabetical order, and pretty much insists that people put things back on the shelves in that order; and no one says that’s censorship, no one complains that freedom of speech means that I can walk into the library and refile a political biography under the gardening section.
[[Of course, since this is not a government forum none of the amendments, including the First, govern here.]] Phenomenal Bitch Lawyer Chick
Exactly, and even if the 1st Amendment applied speech would still be subject to reasonable time, place, and manner restrictions.
Seems to me that you’re construing the Ninth to not mean anything that you don’t want it to.
The Ninth specifically states that unenumerated rights are not to be considered fair ground for government poaching – even majoritarian government (initially, this applied only to the Feds; however, with the doctrine of “incorporaton” applied in this century in the wake of the Fourteen Amendment, we may reasonably suppose that, until specifically denied by the Supremes, it applies to the several States, too). Therefore, you are specifically estopped from claiming that the only “rights” are those specifically enumerated in the Constitution.
Your options are limited to: attacking the philosophy of rights; claiming that enumerated rights are, somehow, superior to unenumerated rights; claiming that the right of free speech is, somehow, so superior that it trumps every other right.
And, as Melin points out, this isn’t a government, or even a government-sponsored, forum. The First Amendment states: “Congress shall make no law…”. not, “People shall do whatever they damn well please with regard to…”.
The ball’s back in your court.
That’s why we have courts. Offer some proof that you constitute a competent court. Otherwise, I don’t buy your opinion.
“Kings die, and leave their crowns to their sons. Shmuel HaKatan took all the treasures in the world, and went away.”
I’d be fascinated to see the results of any lawsuit one might bring that ended up in front of the Supreme Court wherein one asserts their right “not to be bothered”, which is how this started. Given that Our constitution specifically enumerates many rights which, when exercised by some, will and do certainly “bother” others, I don’t think it would get very far.
FCC v. Pacifica Foundation, 438 U.S. 726, 748, 98 S.Ct. 3026, 3039-3040, 57 L.Ed.2d 1073 (1978) upheld an FCC order declaring the radio broadcast of indecent speech, stating that indecent broadcasting “confronts the citizen, not only in public, but also in the privacy of the home, where the individual’s right to be left alone plainly outweighs the First Amendment rights of [the]intruder.” 438 U.S., at 748, 98 S.Ct., at 3040 (emphasis added).
