dlv@bwalk.dm.com (Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM) writes:
* If gays ruined usenet, does that mean at one point usenet was a good thing before it was ruined? If so, gay people at least deserve credit for creating something good, even if they didn't manage to run it well.
Suppose for argument's sake that the people who created Usenet all happened to be gay. Why would "gay people" as a whole, most of whom had nothing to do with it, deserve credit for it?
Okay. Suppose for argument's sake that the people who are censoring Usenet all happen to be gay? Why, then, would all gay people deserve blame for these actions? Now suppose they aren't gay. Them whom are these homohpobic rants really attacking? Gay people or censors? If you say, for instance, "New cypherpunks list for heterosexuals only", who do you think is actually going to be affected by this? Certainly not Gilmore who is completely disillusioned with cypherpunks at this point and not likely to subscribe any mailing list a person like that runs anyway. Rather, you are attacking people who happen to be gay but would otherwise be interested in subscribing to the mailing list. Now suppose it's not instantly possible to discern a person's sexual orientation over the internet, as Dr. Grubor claims it is. Suppose further that some of the people who censor Usenet are gay, and others aren't. Some of the people in favor of free speech are gay, others are not. Many of those who are straight don't just come out and say, "I am not gay," for the simple reason that they oppose discrimination based on sexual orientation and don't believe one's sexual orientation should be relevant to a debate on censorship. In such a case, refocusing the debate on homosexuality rather than censorship hardly furthers your objectives. I believe homophobia is a great way to bring out the censors in people. However, inducing censorship is only part of fighting it. You also need respectable people to some in, argue cogently against the dangers of censorship, perhaps even get some extremely reasonable articles suppressed, and then spread the word about it. I find the freedom-knights tactics' extremely lacking in this second, "clean up and analyze the mess" phase. As a recent example illustrates well, Vulis did a nice job of inducing censorship on cypherpunks. However, I think most peoples' opinions didn't really turn, or at least people didn't realize how serious things were and didn't really care, until Tim May [someone the many freedom-knights hate] started criticizing this censorship in extremely reasonable messages that were suppressed from both the -edited and -flames mailing list.