But for the record, here are the three strikes.
Strike 1
Smac started a pretty bizarre thread about how Western Civilization was literally in danger of extinction because secularism doesn’t encourage high birth rates. He said that
[Latter-day Saints] believe in things that propagate civilization and the human race. Much of secularism is taken up with concepts that lead to the extinction of our society: abortion-on-demand, advocacy of homosexuality, hostility to religion, nanny-statism and its attendant costs, sexual profligacy, and so on.
I honestly didn’t understand his point. It seemed to me that he was either making an extremely flawed argument or was saying something that went way over my head. His messages were full of comments like, “The pro-gay, pro-abortion crowd necessarily dwindles for lack of propagation, hence the need for secularists to proseletyze amongst folks like me and my children.” I found this language to be scorn.
If I may dare say it, it is bigoted to label somebody who is pro-choice as being “pro-abortion”, and it was also ironic to hear a Mormon sound offended that somebody from a different background would be so arrogant as to proselytizing to him and his children.
I found his comments to be full of disdain for secularism, and I thought he was putting all sorts of ugly thoughts into others. But I wanted him to clarify his position before I judged him too hard. I asked him,
Here is a serious question: What’s your point? Are you saying that if everybody saw the light and became secularists that the human race would literally become a species in danger of extinction? Or are you saying that since various backwards cultures over-breed that secularism will go extinct unless they continually get converts from the irresponsible breeders? Or are you saying that if we want our culture (i.e. our non-Catholic, non-Islam, white western culture) to survive, we need to outbreed the Catholics, Muslims, and welfare moms?
Smac got highly offended at the way in which I asked him to clarify his position, and decided to have a chat with the mods. There response to me was hilariously ironic, given Smac's posts on the thread.
Do not put imply ugly thoughts to other posters. We aren't going to put up with disdain anymore so make a choice. ~ Mods.
Strike 2
So I decide to let Smac’s rant sink on its own lack of merit, and I back out. But I thought it would be worthwhile to subtly illustrate how incredibly inaccurate it is to label pro-choice as “pro-abortion”. So I started this thread:
I believe that somebody should have the legal right to be a Mormon. Now, I don’t think the Mormon Church is true and I actually think that becoming a Mormon is a sub-optimal decision in most circumstances. But I don’t believe that the government should be in the business of dictating which religions somebody may belong to.
Therefore, I’m pro-Mormon, right?
I knew that less than half of the people there would get the point, but was surprised that Momus almost immediately shut it down with a terse “No personal threads.”
Strike 3
But I thought my point was worthwhile, so I started the thread again, slightly reworded so that the slower mods wouldn’t be confused as to the point. I made some headway with somebody who originally claimed that “pro-abortion” was a correct term, but then conceded,
You are right that the pro-abortion label is likely unfair to place on all proponents of abortion. Many do believe that the right to an abortion should be protected, even if the person would never choose one for themselves or loved one--I supect there are some LDS who take this stand and would never consider themselves pro-abortion. I'm certain Mitt Romney was one who thought like this(when he ran as pro-choice).
Labeling the other side "pro-abortion" is a political tactic. But so is labeling your opponents "war-mongers". Both sides don't care about being honest or accurate--they care about winning and making extreme statements about their opponents is a normal tactic.
I decided to quibble with the last point, because the word “warmongering” is a superlatively accurate description of President Bush’s actions before the Iraq invasion. In contrast, “pro-abortion” isn’t at all accurate.
The topic of the thread was accurately labeling people, and all I’d done is juxtaposed the word “warmonger” with the word “pro-abortion”, and compared and contrasted whether the words were heated and whether the words were accurate. I was right in the middle of the strike zone of the thread’s topic. But again the moderator was too dense to understand my point, and responded,
You just turned this into a political thread. Thread closed.
