Hostile Reactions to a Fur Sporran?

[DWFII]

This is a poor excuse for your misbehavior. A very poor excuse. When you joined the board, you agreed to leave your political agenda at the door. If you can't keep it civil and respectful like most of us are able to do then might I suggest you say nothing at all in the future. Your generalizations and your insults are unwelcome.

I agree wholeheartedly. As a shoemaker of over 35 years, and as someone who...although not perfect...dislikes the kind of contradiction and hypocrisy that McMurdo cites in post #13 of this thread, I have opinions about the place of human beings in the larger scheme of things and what it means to be in harmony with ourselves, our natures, and the universe in general.

But when someone comes into a thread, blatantly evangelizing for a point of view that even the most stolid of us will admit is contentious, it is a provocation right there. Everything that follows gets a free pass as far as I'm concerned.

Panache called it the "tipping point." And it is. It is not that there are some who don't like fur or or that they express that opinion, or even that they tend to be a little disassociative about it (as, again, in McMurdo's example) but rather that there's always an air of condemnation for those who don't agree. That's what tips the scale...that's where the provocation is.

Because of what I do, because of who I am, because I have spent a lifetime grappling with these issues...both internally as well as with other people...I am disturbed when I read such posts and I want to rise up and dispute what I see as fundamental misapprehensions and, as you so rightly identified it--insult.

I have not, to my knowledge, done so but I applaud your forthrightness.

[Panache]

Gentlemen and Ladies,

Hopefully Scott West has some needed feedback and it is equally to be wished that we have all have a better understanding of how a thread derails.

XMTS is such a great place due to the sum of all our contributions. We all need to take responsibility for what we say and how we say it as it effects that total of civility, pleasantry, and information.

That said this thread has strayed from Scott's original question and the Moderating Staff of XMTS have decided it is for the best of all that it be closed

Sincerely

Jamie and The Mod Squad