chrisgaff1000 - A bad thread on your part, luckily in Australia people have a right to an opinion OUG is expressing his.

Simply put if you do not like the comments of a particular person do not read them, it is YOUR choice.

It is easy to scroll down a page to bypass someone's comments.

Please feel free to join a Forum that only includes people who share your views, chrisgaff1000. It is your absolute right to do so.

sounds to me like the intolerance of secularism rearing its ugly head again. One of the unspoken mantras of secularism is to shut down the debate of those who disagree with you. We see it with the murdering of the unborn, trying to pervert the marriage covenant and other issues. Such tolerance (the irony being the very thing secularist accuse others of).

Dear runner,

Apparently facts don't bother you as long as you have your prejudices and hate. The fact is that all the responses of secularists to the original post support oug's continuing posting.

Hi, I've been contacted by one commenter who thought this topic got through by accident. It didn't. I looked at it. I thought about not approving it, but then I thought it was a conversation worth having in the open.

From time to time we do get complaints about posters on the forum, and I certainly get them off the forum. I thought it worth our while to have a discussion about what it is that we are doing here.

The forum was set-up for discussion that wasn't as polished as what you might expect from articles published in On Line Opinion. We've always taken a pretty broad view of what is valid.

Some of the people who post on this forum have very peculiar ideas and ways of expressing them, from where I stand. But they all get a vote, and as fellow humans, they all deserve respect. One of the things we are trying to do is to have as inclusive a conversation as possible.

I'm reassured by most of the responses to this thread that most of you understand our ethic, and accept it as being reasonable. I hope OUG is not feeling hurt.

I attempted to start another thread on the issue of targeting individual posters for "veto" on this forum.

It has been rejected.

Here's what I wrote:

"Wondering what other OLO posters think of chrisgaff1000's thread to target OUG for "barring" and "veto"?

I'm of the opinion that devoting a thread to targeting an individual poster is against the spirit of free speech, and is perhaps a form of bullying....."express yourself like the rest of us or you will be denigrated".

Chris states in his opening post:

"These threads are being hijacked by some religious proponent who believes everybody should listen to his rantings."

Why doesn't he choose to scroll past OUG's posts if he finds them unacceptable?

We all post here hoping someone will find some value in our "rantings". None of us, I should imagine, believes "everybody should listen to his/her rantings".

If someone is posting outside the guidelines, there is a mechanism to ban them.

Notwithstanding that OUG has received much support from fellow OLOers on Chris's thread, do we really accept that a thread is required to target someone who is still allowed to post here?"