Lack of respect for religions in the JCC...I'm leaving because of it.

I was recently shocked to see how little respect the JCC seems to show for various religions and their members.

This is an example of what I'm talking about. I happen to be Mormon and seeing such disregard for my religion is extremely offensive to me. Many of the things that are being lampooned in this thread are very sacred to members of my church. I expressed my concern to a moderator (who will remain nameless out of respect for that moderator) and was basically told that this sort of thing happens all of the time and that nothing would be done about it. There has been some editing of SOME posts that were particularly offensive, but even those edits didn't occur until hours after the posts were originally made. IMO such threads should be locked from the get go.

I find it appalling that such threads are allowed to remain open no matter which religion is being talked about.

I have been a regular member of the JCC since 2001 and have, until now, found it to be a good experience for the most part. However this disrespectful attitude towards people and the religions that they believe in is adhorant to me and I have decided to leave the JCC. I may or may not come back depending on whether or not the moderators of this forum decide to actually "moderate" such threads. I will probably come in once in a while to see what's being said but I won't contribute to any discussions.

IMO this is a sad day because, as I said before, until now I found this forum to be well moderated and enjoyable to be a member of. I was a regular poster in the Senate, JCC, and games forum. It saddens me that such behavior has been allowed to occur in such a "family friendly" forum.

To those of you that I've gotten to know over the years, I wish you luck and I hope you continue to have fun in the JCC and with your other pursuits in life.

 

You have the right to make your own decision, Vezner. The nature of the JCC is to have fun. Sometimes, that "fun" includes people poking fun at others whether it be what people enjoy doing, watching or their beliefs. Being a Christian I've seen many threads lampooning Jesus, my faith, other Christians, etc. Sometimes I can take them with a sense of humor and other times they genuinely hurt me. But as long as they follow the rules and the TOS, they'll be part of the culture.

You've been a member since 2001 and only now when your faith is held up in a spotlight do you choose to draw the line? I find that a bit hypocritical, quite frankly. You've participated in these boards when there were threads about fat people, skinny people, blacks, whites, homosexuals, criminals, nerds, jocks, smart people, rude users, poop jokes, half-naked women...I think you get the point. If you're going to be a member of a community like the JCC, you need to be prepared to have something you feel strongly about challenged and, yes, sometimes, lampooned.

Sure, we could ban all talk of religion. But then why shouldn't we ban all discussion of everything else? It's a community made up of thousands of people which means that there's a good portion of users that will find your religion to be strange. I certainly get that a lot. As long as they're posting within the rules of the site, a thread like that is fine. I already edited two posts that went over the line and posted a warning to refrain from posts that promote violence toward someone else. They were edited "hours" later after a discussion between the mods as to the thread itself and what we were going to allow.

Best of luck to you and I hope you find a place that meets all your expectations.

 

Are you friends with Isaac Hays?

 

Is that you, Isaac Hayes? Sorry, couldn't resist...

Seriously, I went through the thread and it looks like typical JCC silliness. I don't think it's anything to get too upset about. Then again, I'm an atheist, so what do I know?

Whether it's religion or your favorite movie, you have to be prepared to be offended around here. For instance, your signature praising George W. Bush offends me as someone who opposes his leadership. Will I leave the JC because of it? Of course not. If you really like this place, you'll look past that one thread and stick around for the discussions that you enjoy.

 

Kate,

I don't think you understand what is so offensive about that thread. There are images posted in that thread simply for the purpose of mocking some of the most sacred beliefs of the LDS Church. Would you allow users to repost verbatim the text of our sacred temple ceremonies? Those pictures relate directly to those ceremonies.

Those pictures are not appropriate, even for a "lite" board.

They need to be removed, and they need to be removed now.

Kimball Kinnison

 

I love farewell threads, see you in a month.

 

I am entirely non-religious, and so see all religious mockery on a level playing field. I do not see the difference between ridicule of the LDS, and ridicule of the evangelical Christianity that seems to occur quite regularly.

 

I do understand, Kimball. I've studied Mormonism. However, they're underwear. They're not sacred to me. When someone posts a picture of Jesus being crucified and then photoshops little captions in it, can I get that removed because they're mocking what I find sacred? Each person has different beliefs and in the JCC, there are times when our beliefs are up for the joke of the day. I've learned to live with it and feel that others have the right to express that they find what I believe strange or weird.

 

So it's all good and well when people make fun of the Church of Scientology or call Muslims "Ragheads", but Mormans should be proteced under the umbrella of the JCC TOS?

Vezner has made many political assesments and statements in the past that have offended me and others, should I quit coming here because of his views on my personal ethics and morals?

 

If you're going to get offended by some funny looking underwear, you need to chill out.

 

I don't think you understand what is so offensive about that thread.

I don't think you realise how offensive it is to call a Scotsman "English", yet I doubt you'd agree to moderating it.

"Offense" is entirely subjective, and what is offensive to some people doesn't make sense to others (for example the recent images which offended Muslims).

 

I do find it necessary to respond to this post. You seem to think that I'm a hypocrit because this is something that has happened for years with other religions. I challenge you to find a single post that I have ever made in which I participated in the disrepectful bashing of another religion. I have always avoided such threads and simply assumed that they would be locked once a moderator saw them. It is the response I received in regards to the thread I linked to, in that nothing would be done, that has angered and disappointed me. I believe ANY such thread, no matter which religion is being "lampooned", should be locked if they get to the extreme level that this thread and gone to.

 

In fact, I just saw someone with a signature that said he was totally "Anti-Christian" and that God isn't believable. He should remove it because that's offensive to me and mocks my faith.

edit - Vezner, I never said you directly participated in those types of threads, my point is that you're participating in a forum that houses those threads. You want to leave because of something that just now is upsetting you because it's personal. Yet you can ignore the other threads that make fun at Scientologists or Christians. If those will be a part of the community, so will ones that include Mormons.

 

In my time as a mod, I edited and banned people who did such things, and defended both Muslims and Scientologists (and you can look at the Senate threads to see proof).

This is actually one of the biggest reasons why I have always opposed the decision of he JCC mods to start allowing religious threads (which had been prohibited for quite some time, leading in part to the creation of the Senate). Such threads in an environment like the JCC ultimately will be used almost excusively for mocking others beliefs.

Such things are inappropriate, regardless of the religion involved.

Kimball Kinnison

 

As I said, I always assumed that such threads were being locked. I never make a point of keeping track of such threads to see if they actually did get locked because I find them to be a waste of time and energy. If the JCC isn't willing to be more responsible with subjects that many of it's members hold sacred (again, no matter which religion is being lampooned), then I agree that this is not the kind of community that I want to be a part of. As I said before, I find this to be a sad day.

 

But it's not just religious threads, Kimball. It's poking fun of anything and everything. The thread itself isn't bad. There were two inappropriate posts and those were dealt with. If we can't have a thread about Mormons witnessing then why should we have a thread about Isaac Hayes leaving South Park because he's a Scientologist? People are coming down on Scientology, but that seems to be okay. Where does that line get drawn that one thing is okay and something else isn't? You can just determine that we'll never talk about or poke fun at religion. It's too much a part of the culture. As long as it stays within the TOS, it should be allowed.

edit - Okay, you never made a point to keep up on those threads until it affected you. That's not really something that shows that for 5 years you've felt religious mocking was inappropriate. My point here is that it has gone on all this time and not until it was personal did it seem necessary to bring it up. I've seen many threads about Christians and Scientologists, but, again, they've all followed the TOS.

 

At the very worst the thread in question is social satire. I think there may have been one or two inappropriate pictures posted, that were removed. I fail to see anything else in that thread that was genrally hateful.

 

Looks like satire to me.


[image=http://icantimmormon.com/images/pages/products/large/77.jpg]

 

I don't think you are hearing me. I always made a point of NOT posting in such threads because I didn't find them worth my time. Why encourage a disrespectful conversation about a religion by posting in the thread? That wouldn't make sense. Even when I have posted in a thread that had some disrespectful behavior shown towards a religion, I only did so in defense of the religion in question. However it was VERY rare that I ever did post in such a thread. I always assumed that mods are there to regulate such things and apparantly I was wrong in thinking that the mods of the JCC were doing so.

My decision to leave is because I just learned that apparantly the mods AREN'T doing anything about these threads other than editing the most offensive posts when, IMO, the entire thread should have been closed from the beginning because it was never meant to be anything but a bashing thread (judging from the original post).

 

You'll never be missed if you don't leave.

 

We get people that view different aspects of Star Wars differently, and accuse the other side of "baiting" and ridicule. It's a small example of a real life thing, but people are different and hold different things sacred. In a forum like JCC, where it is an open community, it's a microcasm of the world, basically. If we start telling people that can't discuss anything that could be deemed sensative, it'd be a forum of +1's. And we don't plan to do that.

Should we crack down on the ridicule? Yes. If it gets nasty or inappropriate, most definitely. People get caught up in the discussion and may say something that looking back, could be hurtful to any individual.

Should we tell someone they can't talk about their experience with meeting Morman's on the street? Definitely not. Where would we draw the line?

We can moderate to the TOS post by post, which is what Kate, gabe, Everton and others have done and are trying to do, but we can't dictate something as subjective as this, especially since it's gone on plenty with other beliefs, whether they be politcal, religious, or even about Star Wars. And no matter how personal it is to you, to the rest of the population, it's subjective. All that we can ask is to be more respectful of our diversity in our tone and where the boundaries are.

 

I think that it doesn't matter what religion is, threads that are mocking another religion shouldn't be tolerated at the JC. Now I'll be the first to admit I've found some threads to be funny, but going beyond that, religions are some of the most important values in someones life, and to mock their religion is a form of trolling. Just because it was done to christians, muslims, jews, buddhists, kobolians, etc. and now Mormans doesn't make it right.

Wouldn't the right thing to do here is to just outlaw religious satire threads?

 

The thread in question was about the Mormans that ride around town on their bikes, harrassing people to join their cause. It never got into any kind of mockery of the beliefs of Mormans, it just slightly criticized the practice of the way they attempt to get new members.

 

This would very much be in line with what I have advocated for years.

It is also why I was opposed to the JCC allowing religious-themed threads, because it would be abused in exactly this sort of fashion. It is not appropriate to allow users to mock the religious beliefs of anyone else. All that sort of behavior will do is offend people and alienate portions of hte userbase.

How is that good for the boards as a whole?

Kimball Kinnison

 

So who decides if it's satire?

Who knows enough about all things to judge on this? Except the poster that may be offended. Which brings me to this:

I always made a point of NOT posting in such threads because I didn't find them worth my time.

This is where you have the power to decide if you tolerate it or not, really. You don't participate in the thread. If it's offensive in the TOS sense, then by all means alert a moderator. If it's offensive just to you, you could still alert a moderator, and we'll be there by all means to check it out. But we cannot dictate what is offensive to other people beyond what is in the TOS.