ubuntu-lgbt team mailing list archive

[Doc Kinne <kinnerc@xxxxxxxxx>]

Scott:

On 24 Apr , 2009, at 10:54, Scott James Remnant wrote:

> On Fri, 2009-04-24 at 10:57 +0100, Jimmy Forrester-Fellowes wrote:
>
> > Would also be good to see this group get more popular & active. I was
> > shocked when I was told in the official ubuntu IRC channels
> > (#ubuntu-offtopic on irc.ubuntu.com/freenode to be specific) LGBT  
> > is a
> > banned topic according to the channels terms of service. I think in
> > this day and age that's appalling, what does everyone else think?
> I hadn't heard about that, I'll investigate and raise this with the
> community council.


You just made my day, Scott. THANK YOU!

Maia, my concern with such a "banned topic" is that it targets LGBT  
people and is therefore blatantly discriminatory.  Now, I say that, at  
this point, not exactly having READ it so I may be talking out of my  
butt (although that hasn't happened in at least the last 5  
milliseconds!)

The issue is what is banned by this policy? If I say, "My boyfriend  
and I installed Ubuntu together last night and liked it" will that get  
me kicked out of the channel by this policy? Because I'm a boy with a  
boyfriend, is that not seen as an "LGBT topic." However, if you tried  
to kick me out for saying, "My girlfriend and I installed Ubuntu..."  
people would be in an uproar because no one sees anything wrong with  
that.

There cannot be any LGBT policies on our lists. They are  
discriminatory. There are no Black policies. There are no Jewish  
policies. Why are there LGBT policies?

I'm not sure how you can NOT discuss gender because its "usually"  
obvious by the name. Discussions regarding the concept of gender may  
be inappropriate because the channel is for dicussing Ubuntu topics,  
but this is true both for Straights and LGBT people. The same thing  
goes with sexuality. You need to have the SAME standards for Straight  
people and for LGBT people. No one bats an eye if a boy mentions his  
girlfriend or his wife. No one SHOULD bat an eye if a boy mentions is  
boyfriend or his husband. And if someone DOES bat an eye, they are in  
the wrong and need to be dealt with.

Within the spectrum of sexuality discussions, of course, if a guy and  
a girl are discussion how they got it on last night, I think that  
might be inappropriate to the forum, but not more so and not less so  
than if two guys or two girls were discussing the same thing.

So, Jimmy, thank you for bringing it up.

Scott, THANK YOU for looking into it. Such a policy (granted I've not  
read it, so I may not actually know what I'm talking about) would  
disturb me greatly and poison the community for me.

===================

Its wonderful to see the list becoming more active! The MA Loco had  
their Release Party in Boston's Back Bay last night and it worked out  
well. I myself will be upgrading my little Pentium II Dell Inspiron  
7000 to Xubuntu 9.04 this weekend.

More later.  :-)
---
Richard "Doc" Kinne • Rikardo «Dokĉjo» KINNE, BA, MSc., AMAAS
<kinnerc @ gmail.com>
"I'm the Doctor, and you're in the biggest library in the universe.  
Look me up!"
- The Doctor
"Forests of the Dead," Doctor Who

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