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Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!seismo!hao!kpno!ut-sally!jsq
From: jsq@ut-sally.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.news.group
Subject: Re: net.gay
Message-ID: <294@ut-sally.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 21-Sep-83 12:20:27 EDT
Article-I.D.: ut-sally.294
Posted: Wed Sep 21 12:20:27 1983
Date-Received: Fri, 23-Sep-83 09:08:39 EDT
References: <135@denelcor.UUCP>, <18656@wivax.UUCP>, <1050@utcsstat.UUCP> <315@cbosgd.UUCP> <286@ut-sally.UUCP> <1976@floyd.UUCP>
Organization: U. Texas CS Dept., Austin, Texas
Lines: 34

Replying to Andy Tannenbaum:

Yes, I saw yours and others' objections to net.women.only (notice
the parenthetical comment in my previous article), but that group
did not get nearly as much reaction, nor by as many people with
traditionally strong influence on what path USENET takes.

I'm aware of the political clout problem in having net.gay around
for managerial types to see.

There already are sites that don't accept net.suicide, net.jokes, et al.
If they find net.gay so offensive, why don't they just unsubscribe to that?
Why should the rest of us censor ourselves because some sites may have
problems?  I realize backbone hosts not carrying a particular group could
inconvenience sites downstream from them, but I wonder how serious
that problem would be.

You're right that this site at least has relatively little trouble
with management, and I wouldn't expect that particular newsgroup
to cause problems here (Austin having possibly the largest gay population
of any city between the coasts could have something to do with it).
What I have gotten complaints about is the huge amount of non-technical
flames passing for news.  Net.gay would simply be lumped among that, here.

If the name is what you're really worried about (remember there
has been a lot of discussion about homosexual topics in net.singles
lately), why not just call it net.motss as somebody proposed?
That would likely solve the problem of some news medium somewhere
noticing the existance of a net.gays even if many sites didn't accept it.
You could always explain it as some netter's attempt to spell
motorcycles....
-- 
John Quarterman, CS Dept., University of Texas, Austin, Texas
{ihnp4,kpno,ut-ngp}!ut-sally!jsq, jsq@ut-sally.{ARPA,UUCP}