The Hall of Fire

Well, number 16 was not Hawaii (still pending), but Illinois!

http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-gay ... 7118.story

(xposts with Al) But that's the thing, they weren't sociopaths , or at least one can't accuse the vast swath of Germans involved of that. No, they had just stopped thinking of Jews as humans and so that cruelty to them didn't "count". Dehumanizing your enemy or getting a message from God ...

We're getting very close in Hawaii: http://www.advocate.com/politics/marriage-equality/2013/10/30/breaking-hawaii-senate-oks-marriage-equality-house Senate said yes, House is debating and is closer now (but is expected to pass next week), and the governor has pledged to sign the bill. We are directl...

Oh sorry, I meant to post the NYT link to that. I waited to update the thread title until it was official that there was not going to be a further appellate proceeding.

I have updated the thread title.

Anything that SF cannot win, Boston should win. Applying that common-sense logical principle, go Sox!!!!

The conversation as it's unfolding in this thread, though, contains a number of as-yet unquestioned presumptions that originate from the Judeo-Christian tradition (primarily the Christian aspect thereof), even beyond the mere existence of an afterlife, e.g. - The idea that we will be "perfected...

Hmmm. An eternal break from trying to make sense of things. That does kind of sound like heaven, doesn't it? Honestly, and I'm not trying to be difficult here, but the process of trying to make sense of things is so fundamental to what I understand to be "human" that I'm not really sure w...

I really should read this thread more often. Gorgeous pics, V and narya.

But the only score that matters right now is this: US bombs dropped on Syria = 0 Additional chemical weapons attacks by Assad = 0 I'm no foreign policy-maker, but I am a pragmatist, and the things I care about are, in descending order of importance: - Loss of some number of additional lives - from ...

Absolutely tragic. I hate that what for so many of us is a place of comfort, our "home base," will now invoke for others memories of fear and injury and tragedy. Of course things are worse still for the two confirmed who have lost their lives and possibly for others among the unaccounted f...

I generally agree with V's assessment that Kennedy was not prepared to declare a sweeping, nationwide right to same-sex marriage. He certainly has laid the groundwork to do so in 5-10 years. If the current pace of increasing acceptance of gay couples and same-sex marriage continues, it is likely tha...

There has not been any "double standard" on this for a very, very long time (in Internet years); your comment deals with old history. (ETA I'm not sure that we ever publicly announced that we had adopted this policy, which we probably should have done at the time - sorry!) Well as I had n...

Oh, I went and looked it up. I was the culprit, and it looks like the reason for deletion in that case was again that I'd written some personal stuff about my family and then rethought my comfort level in sharing it. Anyway, you objected to my deleting that post in November 2009 , and since your obj...

I need to interject a quick response to something Nin said on the previous page: I also wanted to add a personal experience: ever since I found out once in the current of a thread that some posters on this board can not only edit their posts and even edit them out, but entirely and completely delet...

Your repeated insistence that people should post and behave the way that you want them to is far more irritating to me than any deleted post I can recall on this board. I haven't seen Jewel doing this. As I see it, she has been expressing a concern that people were censoring themselves. I'd say her...

I think what we write on a public messageboard becomes public; it is no longer our private property. I understand that some people may feel this way, but I will choose not to post (or post very sparingly and non-substantively) on any messageboard that enforces this view. You can certainly create a ...

Narya, that makes a lot of sense: most of the posts I may reconsider or remove are Lasto/Manwe-style posts. However, there have been times on this board when I've wanted to withdraw more personal posts that have dealt explicitly with my own life, family history, personal decisions, etc. In some case...

Saying that deleting posts is "not helpful to achieving any constructive purpose" seems to ignore the strong benefit to the individual poster of removing from the public view words that they no longer wish to share. In turn, knowing that one can speak without having one's words indelibly t...

Anthy, I can relate to some of the ideas you're expressing. If I'm on the fence about making a particular post (not just at HoF, but in general online), at times the lack of response or type of response I get to that post will influence whether I leave it up. The reasons I might question a particula...