To BIG and the ferret community:

It is not, in my opinion, OK to allow one person to make incendiary
statements about a group of people, in this case Hispanics, and then
urge all the rest of us to not respond. It would be far better in such
circumstances to return the e-mail to the sender and ask that such
remarks be removed.

I personally find it much worse than politically incorrect to insinuate
that LA residents (including myself) are any less American than people
elsewhere in the United States. To my way of thinking, it's offensive
and smacks of racism to make this sort of comment, and I quote:
>"In the time I spent in LA I felt like a foreigner in my own country.
>LA is 40% Hispanic (and that's just the legal ones).

If it's not OK for others to respond to such incredibly intolerant
remarks, then I would ask that we not allow such remarks that have
nothing to do with ferrets to be posted in the first place.

Thank you.

Linda

[Moderator's note: The difference (in my moderator view) is the main
direction of the post. If a post is overwhelmingly about ferrets but
contains a political, politically incorrect, religious or off-topic
remark I usually let it through unless it's particularly vulgar.
Where to draw the line is a little difficult because I'm not trying
to judge every statement in a post. In fact, I often disagree with a
lot of what people say here but I defend their right to say it. :-)

If the topic of the post is the poster's political view about the
racial makeup of a region with a snippet thrown in about ferrets it
likely would be rejected. It is exactly along those lines that I
asked people not to debate that one off-topic remark -- the result
would be posts with no ferret related content but a heavy dose of
unrelated political discussion.

I realize many of you feel the remark should not have been allowed
and I really am sensitive to your thoughts. But I've also received
several requests that I eliminate all posts which reference religion
or God or the rainbow bridge. And at least 2 people have said any
mention of a political party shoould not be allowed. Recently someone
was upset by the term "welfare" and thought I should have substituted
"public assistance."

I can go on with more examples, but my whole point is that I'm not
here to censor posts. Things have to be pretty ugly for me to reject
them -- and usually a couple of posts a week ARE rejected! BIG]

[Posted in FML 6859]