Interesting happenings at a message board...

I used to frequent. If anyone has visited my site in the past few days would notice I took Democratic Underground off my list of favorite sites, and I did it for a reason, I was banned(called tombstoning over there) from that message board. Now, in the normal course of events, as an equitable enforcement of the rules, I wouldn't have a problem with being banned if I deserved it, yet, I must wonder, why was it that not only was I, but also 10 other members of the board, all of them either GLBT or GLBT-friendly?

In my own case, I haven't been disruptive in months, indeed, my only recent activity on the board was defending the existence of public libraries from 2 other members who were flaming a thread about Florida's decision to stop state funding for libraries.

Then a moderator over there called Raputin started a thread basically telling people to shut up about possible Supreme Court appointments and to trust Obama to make the right decision. Recently, one of the names floating around is that of an open lesbian judge, and as can be imagined, a lot of gays and lesbians were wondering what her chances are, and that maybe she should be appointed to alleviate some fears that President Obama's Administration doesn't take the concerns of the GLBT community seriously.

The reaction to these concerns from many members of DU was derision, and the slamming of what they call "identity politics", in other words, the minority should just be happy with what they have now.

This is where Rasputin's thread comes in, this moderator himself has a history of being hostile and snarky to GLBT members, in addition he also regularly violated the guidelines that Mods are supposed to follow, including staying out of controversial issues when possible. He's posted snarky locking messages, in other cases, for example, an innocuous thread on GLBT rights would get flamed, and he locked it and blamed the OP for starting flamebait, even though the thread itself wasn't flamebait, but was flamed by homophobes instead.

So this poster has a history, and so when he started his most recent thread, which was itself flamebait, people responded expectedly. Oddly enough, not many personal attacked, but pretty much everyone who did disagree with the post, no matter how polite, had the posts deleted and the poster was sometimes banned. Then Skinner, the big wig Admin, weighed in on the thread and basically defended the OP and said that anyone who disagrees can leave.

This was the last straw, so I finally posted in that thread(didn't before that time), with this message:

34. Hmm, well, I guess you are going to be modifying these guidlines soon as well?

Edited on Sun May-03-09 10:15 PM by Solon
However, when moderators participate in discussions that are unrelated to their official duties, they are expected to do so in a manner that respects differing points of view, and promotes left-wing solidarity rather than division. Even when they are not performing their official moderator duties, moderators are required to hold themselves to a higher standard than other members of this discussion board. With this in mind, moderators are expected to observe the following guidelines:

1. They are expected to behave themselves at all times in a way that reflects positively on Democratic Underground, and complies with all the Rules and Regulations of this website.
2. They are expected to share and help promote Democratic Underground's mission of left-wing unity and solidarity.
3. They may not engage in personal attacks against other members of this board.
4. They may not engage in attacks against other political, social, or minority groups, such as the Democratic Party, the Green Party, the Democratic Leadership Council, environmentalists, union members, gays and lesbians, Christians, etc. They are expected to avoid attacks against respected public figures in the Democratic Party or the political left.
5. They may not use their powers as a moderator to enforce a particular party line. It is not appropriate for moderators to threaten to ban someone with whom they do not agree.
6. They are expected to be fair and evenhanded at all times, especially to those with whom they disagree.
7. They are forbidden from discussing moderator business anywhere except in the moderators-only discussion forum. If it becomes apparent that a moderator has broken this rule, he/she will be relieved of moderator duties immediately, and may be banned from the discussion board as well.


http://www.democraticunderground.com/forums/moderators.html

Within about a minute, my post was deleted, and I was banned(tombstoned). My post may have violated a rule, particularly the rule concerning publicly questioning the moderating policies of DU, and I actually don't have a problem with this tombstoning, the only problem I have is that not all rule violators are created equal. Some of DU's many rules include support for GLBT civil rights, not attacking people based on race, sexual orientation, sex, religion, etc. and not participating in personal attacks, to give a brief summary.

However, many regular violators of these rules, including posters such as Hamdenrice, sampsonblk and many others can violate these rules with impunity, because they do it in defense of Obama's administration. They can attack gays, disrupt forums, start flamebait, etc. without suffering the ultimate penalty, being banned from the board. Hell, GLBT members of the board have been threatened with being suspended or tombstoned for alerting the mods to such posts.

So now, Skinner(David Allen is his real name) has laid down the gauntlet, for while Democratic Underground, in writing, has rules saying they support GLBT civil rights, they do not follow the spirit of what they claim, its a lie, in other words.

In fairness, I never expected DU itself to be homophobia free, trolls and the like always get through, nor do I expect the mods to be perfect, or to react to all such posts instantly, but when several different posters have a history of posting such posts, for months, even years on end, then something is seriously wrong with the moderation of that board.

This post isn't a whining post, indeed, I frankly don't care that I've been banned, what I do care about are GLBT activists who think they found a friendly place on the net to congregate to start participating in the board. My advice to you is this, avoid that place like the plague, you will be attacked, derided, any threads you start disrupted, etc. especially if you try to criticize any policies of the current Administration. The boards rules are only enforced selectively, GLBT people and their friends are second class DU members, period.

I'm not the only one to notice this, and its been a problem on DU from months, Lavender Liberal made a post, and another post was made about this at Pam's House Blend as well.

Oh, I forgot, I was DU member Solon.

Issues #5 Marriage as a Right and Privilege...

Yes, the assumption would be right, this post is about, ultimately gay marriage, or Marriage Equality, if you prefer. This has been a hot topic for many years, and a favorite of Republicans as a wedge issue to use GLBT people as scapegoats to scare people into voting for them.

However, lately things have seemed to have come to a tipping point, with the narrow passage of Proposition 8, along with decisions in many other states, some postive for equality, other negative, it seems 2009 is going to be the year when equality will take center stage. 2008 was just run up to this.

I was frankly appalled at the passage of Proposition 8, I can never understand why people would vote to strip a basic civil right such as marriage from an entire segment of the population. I've heard the arguments, through the years, both for and against, and the ones that make the least amount of sense are the ones against Marriage Equality.

The religious arguments in particular make no sense to me, particularly when coming from Christians, for I read the Bible, and as far as I can tell, marriage in the Bible is not necessarily between one man and one woman. Indeed, in the Bible, it seems to be between one man, as many wives as he can afford, concubines, and if that isn't enough, if his wife or wives can't conceive, then any servants he can have sex with, for procreation purposes, of course. *sarcasm*

Even if Christians accept the concept that Gay sex is a sin, they must also think screwing the maid is also a sin, yet the bible condones one act, but not the other. Why is that?

Frankly, the above is a non-issue, in this country, we have separation of Church and State, and Marriage, for all the claims of it being sacred, or a sacrament, is not exclusively either. Marriage was, and always will be a property contract between people. The nature of said contract has changed throughout history, many times, in many different cultures, including our own.

Whether it was a contract where one family sold their daughter to the groom of another family, in a form of slavery, or it was two(or more) people "shacking up" by moving in together(common law marriage), and hell, even Same Sex Marriages have precedent in history within some Native American tribes and some ancient cultures in the Old World.

Ultimately the arguments against Same Sex marriage have been rife with logical inconsistencies, outright bigotry, and just plain old ignorance of history.

But, that's neither here nor there, the subject at hand is whether marriage is a civil right or not, and frankly it is, as the Supreme Court wrote in Loving v. Virginia in 1967: "Marriage is one of the "basic civil rights of man," fundamental to our very existence and survival...."

So what does this mean exactly, well basically that entering into a marriage contract is a right, the contract itself comes with numerous benefits and privileges that the government bestows on couples who enter into this arrangement, benefits that unmarried couples do not have. At the same time, the contract also comes with contractual obligations that the couple must abide by, or else the marriage may be dissolved. What I'm talking about, of course, is divorce.

So, how would this apply to same sex couples? Well, it could be a matter of interpretation, however, a reading of the 14th amendment might help. Specifically Section 1:

Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Emphasis is entirely mine, but I think this is rather clear cut, once the courts get a hold of it. GLBT citizens of the United States are having their privileges abridged by the states through laws and amendments like Proposition 8. This, in addition to the courts precedence of declaring marriage a civil right seems to me that it will be inevitable that Marriage Equality will come before the Supreme Court, sooner or later, and they will have to, yet again, like in all civil rights cases, "legislate from the bench".

Until this time comes, however, people who are fair minded and fight for justice must not sit on our hands and wait for this time to come. Right now the battle is being fought state by state, in legislatures, courthouses, and the ballot box, and the pressure must not be let up. The only thing I can think of that truly positive about this, even with setbacks like Proposition 8 is that history is on the side of justice. Plessy v. Ferguson was a setback as well, so hope shouldn't be lost.

The Problem with the health insurance industry is that there is no free market for it.

This is one of those ideas that just popped into my head this morning, but it seems to make sense. Think of a traditional capitalistic market, such as toys, food, or pretty much any other market. Generally the more competition there is in these markets, the lower the prices. Cost cutting measures in these industries would involve making more of the product per man-hour and for a few cents less, and make up the loss through volume. They can then try to out compete each other, etc.

I then realized that the health insurance(and most other insurance) industries don't work this way, in fact they CAN'T. What's the most effective cost cutting measure for an insurance company besides denying claims? Its volume, but not in mass production of some type of widget, instead by expanding the risk pool of insurers to low risk groups of people. The problem is that people don't get built off the assembly line.

There's a lot of talk about "choice" and competition within the insurance industry, the problem is that population shifts, and and growth, occurs too slowly for costs to drop. There are no pricing wars within this industry in regards to premiums, simply because the amount of people any individual company can potentially sign up is negligible, and may not offset the costs of paying claims.

Usually, in a capitalistic market, the more competitors there are, the lower the prices in that market. In the Insurance industry, the opposite happens. The reason is simple, for every new competitor out there, the size of the risk pool for EVERY insurance company out there actually drops, and this can increase costs for those companies that are then passed on to the both current and future policy holders.

This tells me that the industry itself isn't sustainable in the long term at all, and the cracks are apparently showing now. They can try other cost cutting measures, I hear a lot of talk of computerizing claims and billing, but over any extended period of time, this would have a limited effect. We were promised the "paperless office" back in the 1980s, I doubt that the 2000s can deliver on the promise any more than the 1980s had.

The most effective cost cutting measure for insurance companies would be consolidation, not competition, the problem is that this would be advocating for a monopoly, which is generally bad for customers of any sort. It seems to me that the insurance industry will end up being destroyed, or at least marginalized, in this country, if not by being replaced by some public financing system, then by destroying themselves. I just hope we are smart enough to be able to set up an effective public system to fall back on when that happens.