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From: trb@floyd.UUCP (Andy Tannenbaum)
Newsgroups: net.news.group
Subject: Re: net.gay
Message-ID: <1976@floyd.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 19-Sep-83 13:41:51 EDT
Article-I.D.: floyd.1976
Posted: Mon Sep 19 13:41:51 1983
Date-Received: Tue, 20-Sep-83 14:27:42 EDT
References: <135@denelcor.UUCP>, <18656@wivax.UUCP>, <1050@utcsstat.UUCP> <315@cbosgd.UUCP> <286@ut-sally.UUCP>
Organization: Bell Labs, Whippany, NJ
Lines: 41

Ideally, net.gay shouldn't be a problem, and it wouldn't make a
difference whether people wanted to discuss AIDS research or where to
find young boys.  USENET is not the ideal world.

John Quarterman (jsq@ut-sally) wonders why net.gay is causing a stir
whereas net.women.only didn't.  Well.  I screamed loudly but briefly
that I thought that net.women.only was just as discriminatory as
net.men.only, but certainly I am never going to say that a group
shouldn't exist just because it rubs me the wrong way.  If someone
started net.neo.nazi, I would object to its contents, but I wouldn't
remove it.  So why net.women.only and not net.gay?  Because Corporate
America is in love with its alleged support for the womens movement,
so net.women.only is probably a trendy, withit group to have on your
corporation's machine according to the guys who shell out the bucks.
Gays don't have nearly as much support as women from Corporate America,
I really can't see a BTL VP showing a list of netnews groups to some
visiting dignitary saying "Look, here's our information network of the
future, it even has a 'gay' category" where I could easily see Mr. VP
showing off the women's issues group.

Yes, I'm talking about political clout here.  It sucks, but it's
reality.

Another point is that typical women's newspapers and magazines tend to
be inoffensive to the average middle of the road person on the street.
Typical gay newspapers and magazines would be quite harsh and offensive
to these people on the street.  In a "free access" forum like USENET,
there's no reason that a gay newsgroup might not wander in this
direction.  We can pretend to say that we'll all be good boys and
girls, but ONE article by a novice user could cause lots of grief.
This is even more true given the anonymity offered by USENET.  (Just
mentioning this scares me.)

I'm sure that most of the folks who defend these touchy issues don't
have heavy-handed managers breathing down their necks.  Please realize
that there are lots of USENET sites whose managers aren't exactly
thrilled about having netnews on the machines at all, and the users on
those machines would appreciate it if you hippies out there wouldn't
keep trying to throw more straws on the camel's back.

	Andy Tannenbaum   Bell Labs  Whippany, NJ   (201) 386-6491