you tried to tempt fate, be careful what you wish

And this just came out from Desmond Shang:

Hi all,

There was, unsurprisingly, a big fuss over the upcoming covenant change regarding confederate flags.


Most importantly: if someone disagrees with me, or the covenant, or whatever, please be classy and respectful toward them.

This whole thing was completely predicated on recent, multiple SL related problems, not RL or something I just dreamed up. It's not new either. There was confederate flag related griefing, and complaints after the Dylan Roof shootings a couple years ago. Related? You guys tell me. I may be wrong that the recent issues are related to recent RL protests in Virginia. It seems obvious but I can't prove it. If anyone cares to step forward and talk about specific incidents, they sure can. My guess is that at least one incident is probably a hot topic already. But I'm not going to call anyone out. I'll take the heat. Even though I've done my best to maintain free speech (hey, remember rights in the covenant was my idea) there's a difference between letting people speak their minds, and turning a blind eye to neo nazi's and the klan use Caledon's free speech covenant as 'cover'. Nobody should be surprised that griefers are in Second Life, or that the confederate flag is a fantastic griefing tool.

Let me be perfectly clear, I'm not stupid, I know what censorship is. I'm asking people to remove flags, let's call that what it is: censorship. There have to be a damn good reasons for that. Here are my reasons.

a) I refuse to provide cover to 'confederate roleplayers' or 'klan roleplayers' or their real counterparts, or trolls, inciting hate.

b) I'm *not* going to try to decide intent, nor have some inquisition figure it out. Just imagine if you had to decide who gets to fly a confederate flag. Daisy Duke? The Grand Wizard? Or Tara, who wants to role play a working plantation? I'm flat out not dealing with it.

Am I biased? Probably. Nazi flags are legal under a lot of circumstances in the united states; I've never tolerated them in Caledon at all. Nobody had a problem with those banned. Yes, I'm jewish and yes I took a very european approach to neo nazi symbols of hate. Even so, I wasn't quite sure what to do with the confederate flag. I'm not any kind of history expert. My thought was: don't all flags have some blood on them? What's really connected to a symbol? I sought advice. This was the clearest response I got. Those old, devastatingly sincere words from the VP of the confederacy itself, clinched my decision. If anyone still absolutely *has* to fly the confederate flag on their parcel, there are a lot of other places to do it than Caledon. I'll give a few weeks for people to figure out where to go if this issue is a showstopper for them, but I'm done with the confederate flag issue, and yes it will be enforced. Blame me.

I did not open this decision to community discussion, even if I did have a perfect record of the last 10 years of relevant issues that came up. That's what would be needed to evaluate this, though I know for a fact a lot of you saw with your own eyes. We had plenty of other problems; I've dealt with: Nazi flags (banned), Nazi role play (banned), child sexuality (banned even before the lindens banned it), various churches (all allowed, even the scientology one, yes we had that in Caledon Moors once), gambling (banned before the lindens did it), goreans (allowed), and probably the second most controversial to the confederate flag: the 'rainbow' flag (allowed). Yes, the rainbow flag was actually, truly controversial back in 2006 with some residents wishing it was gone. Times do change. In short, it really sucks to deal with an estate.

Finally, some have asked: what about ISIS flags and such? Or Russian flags or Hillary or Trump or UKIP signs. I haven't yet had anyone try to recreate a gulag here, or an ISIS terrorist cell, but if anyone seriously tries that, then I'll deal with it as it comes up. I would *like* to believe we are all mature enough to handle political candidate signs, I see that more of a theme issue, just keep your election signs inside a house window if you *have* to have one please.

Des

And that should be that, but I'll watch for more signs of intrusive debate. Truly, I never expected this silly issue to be the thing that divided Caledonians more than any other. I'm just baffled.