Here's a good meditation for the day.

Let's say there was a Catholic forum by the name of "X.com"

It is run by a single owner/moderator.
The forum has hundreds of regular members discussing a wide range of topics.

One day, two individuals have a serious dispute about Television. One of them, Liberal Larry, thinks it's OK to watch; the other, Strict Sam, thinks it's mortally sinful to even own one. They vehemently argue for several days, going back and forth and getting quite heated in their comments, name-calling, and rhetoric.

Finally they both "call each other out" and shortly thereafter go to the Moderator with a "it's him or me" ultimatum.

The ten million dollar question: What would you do if you were the Moderator?

A) Ban Liberal Larry, and have him storm off to other fora to blast X.com as being a bunch of nutjob cultists who want to live in a bunker, who have forsaken the truth in favor of a new Jansenism.
B) Ban Strict Sam and have him storm off in a rage to blast X.com as being taken over by liberals -- after all, the moderator can't even see that owning a TV is a mortal sin. What's next? Pandering to queers?
C) Try to stick to the truth -- that owning a TV isn't prudent because of its brainwashing power and the fact of WHO owns all the studios that produce its content -- but that it's not a mortal sin to own one. If you take this path, you might risk offending BOTH of them.

And whichever choice you make, you'll probably make more than 1 enemy because each of the two combatants has been a member for years, has his various strengths, virtues, charm, etc., and has collected quite a few friends/followers on the forum.

Moreover, once the "controversy" breaks, any general malcontents will jump on board, trying to stir things up as much as possible, for their own various reasons.

You might miss an objectively bad post or two -- something that needed moderation -- being as the forum gets 400+ new posts a day, and the various factions will keep quoting how you "allowed" this and that to be posted. Strict Sam and Liberal Larry both have their days when they're wrong -- either going too far to the left or the right -- so there are occasional bad posts from both.

Moral of the story: It's NOT easy to be a moderator. A lot of people think it would be great, but let's just say "you know not what you ask."

I would ban neither of them and let the chips fall where they may.

That's not as perfect a solution as you might think. I can tell you've never been a moderator.

With some people, you can let things calm down/blow over and everything returns to normal. With other people, they never let anything go, harping on a given point like a mantra, again and again, until everyone is sick of it.

These latter also will start twisting everything to suit their "goal", whatever that might be (e.g., banning a certain individual, etc.) while repeating their assertion(s) almost to the level of brainwashing.

Personally, I prefer to let as many people stay on to discuss as long as they will live in peace. But they have to "coexist" with everyone else. We're a bunch of Trad Catholics; I'm not expecting you to be ecuмenical.

We're CATHOLICS for crying out loud. In fact, one ex-member a few years ago (the one who tried to destroy me and my family) called me an "ecuмenical harlot". Yes, I know, I allow various kinds of Trad Catholics to post here. It's a veritable pantheon.  

:rolleyes:

See what I mean though?  You're either an ecuмenist (if you allow all Trad Catholics) or a cultist (if you only allow your flavor). A nαzι (if you allow threads about race) or a liberal multiculturalist (if you don't allow them).

Everything is exaggerated, black & white. Ridiculous.

It goes without saying that "just get along with each other" would be my preference.

I believe that banning a user should be a rare thing indeed. Only in the worst cases of a user totally not belonging here, and/or not consenting to live in peace with the other members.  Insubordination, repeatedly and publicly taking the moderator to task, would fall into this category as well.

I realize that I bring up topics that may be offensive to some at times. On the same note, I also believe that some of the points that are made in these topics are truthful. To persecute someone for the truth, although it may be offensive to some, is not right. The topics I bring up are issues that I see going on in our society today. It saddens me that so many want to view things the way they do. If you want to love people of another race then fine. Theres nothing wrong with that. I just think that too many people of other races in our society is a threat. Especially with the Jєωs trying to do what they want to do. To persecute me for expressing this view...I believe is wrong.

On the same token...I totally understand what Matthew is saying in this thread.