There's a mindset here that I've been trying to understand for years.
In a post at 5:19 AM above, Steve Shaw says, apparently to SRS:

Since you posted your long post, two of the nastiest people here have continued to post, one bleating about being badly done to and the other pretending to support you. Believe me, he doesn't.

According to my mindset, I would say the two nastiest persons posting to this thread are Musket and Steve Shaw; but I suppose that Steve is referring to akenaton and Keith A of Hertford, or maybe Pete from Seven Stars Link. Ake and Keith and Pete have often expressed ideas I disagree with, but they have always, always expressed their ideas in a civilized manner. Musket and Steve, on the other hand, go self-righteously ballistic every time one of the three opens his mouth. The conduct of Musket and Steve and some others is combative, and therefore problematic to Mudcat; while the conduct of the conservatives is not - even though not a single one of the moderators agrees with the basic philosophies of akenaton, Keith A., and Pete from 7 Stars.

Maybe this is an American-British cultural difference. Even the more gentle Brits here seem to express alarm at what we Americans see as normal conservative bullshit. And Ake and Keith and Pete are far more civilized and polite than are our "Tea Party Patriots" that keep threatening to take over the US in order to save it.

I guess the crucial issue here is LGBT rights. It's my understanding that no country on earth permitted gay marriage until 2002, when I think it was the Netherlands that legalized it. Since 2002, gay marriage has become legal in the majority of the 50 united states, and the Supreme Court may legalize it in the entire nation in a few months. That's an amazingly quick change for the US, so we supporters of LBGT rights are pleased. We have no reason to go ballistic over criticism of gay marriage, because we see that criticism changing into acceptance so quickly.

But the British mindset seems to be different. Brits seem to get more upset about opposing political ideas than Americans do, and many Brits seems to think those opposing ideas must be suppressed - that Mudcat has some sort of obligation to delete all comments that question the rights of homosexuals. Americans may not like what other people say, but they are generally appalled at the idea of suppressing what others say.

So, there's a difference. And it's very difficult to know how to deal with that difference. And while I tend to like Musket and Steve Shaw and Dave the Gnome and others, I just can't understand their perspective on this.

-Joe-