You want me to remove something someone else posted. You feel you have very good reason to do that. Good moral reasons. I read them, they're pretty good as such things go. But they are unconvincing to me.

Why?

Well, I've heard those before. Coming from the other end. They're the same reasons everyone has for censoring someone else.

I didn't conflate crossdressing with sexual fetish -- but some crossdressers do and probably most of the mainstream who have an opinion about it. I didn't fail to correct publicly held misconceptions about crossdressing. I've been running this site -- for people to do just that if they want to -- for nine years now. Accusing me of laxity in this fight is pointless.

I've said it here before and I will continue to say it -- morality as a reason to NOT post something leaves us with nothing to post. You want your morals to triumph here. The mainstream wants their morals to triumph and shut us down. I get moral arguments PM'ed and e-mailed to me all the time about something or other posted here. I respond politely the same way. Moral arguments about TG issues are irrelevant to what I'm doing here. I delete moral arguments when they are posted attached to a story.

Morality as a reason for censorship is bankrupt. What little redaction I do here, I do for practical reasons, to prevent flamewars and damage to the mission of this site. This is a friendly place to read, write and discuss TG fiction.

Betty's link supports that mission. How? Well, I suspect that many of the people who come here and read some of the stories here would be interested in her site. Why? Because there are a fair number of stories here that cater to that particular sensibility.

Your protestation of her post does not serve the site because you are proclaiming a moral superiority over Betty and the BC fans that likely visit her site. You're claiming that your vision of crossdressing is more legitimate than Betty's.

You don't have to like Betty's business. You don't have to patronize it. You don't even have to pretend to do those things. But if you want to come to BigCloset and read the sort of story you like that is posted here, you're going to have to live with the fact that there are people who come here who are not like you. And they probably like stories you would not like. And some of them may like the sort of thing that goes on at Betty's.

Everybody thinks that there are moral absolutes. And there are. But they don't concern what people like to read or what they do for fun with consenting adults. Those are individual judgements. And individually, each of us has the right to make those judgements and not have someone else make them for us.

I do as much as I can to protect those basic rights and others. For me those appear to be moral absolutes, I may be wrong but I don't think I am. I have a second test for moral positions -- is it ethical? Ethics are concerned with equity and fairness.

Would it be fair to Betty to ban a link to her site from here when many of the stories here feature places that at least resemble hers and text situations that are mirrored in some of her graphics? No, that would not be fair.

So since it seems both moral and ethical to me to let her post her link, and it's my judgement that really counts here, that's not completely fair but practically there's no other way to do it, her link stays.

And I have to say, this wasn't a gray area for me. Not even as close as the shaggy dog story I've gotten half a dozen private messages about. This is clearly in the realm of what is allowed under the guidelines and principles I have been operating this website on for nearly a decade.

And if the worst thing I do in my life is make someone annoyed at me for allowing someone else to post a link to kinky, adult website then I'm doing good. :)

Hugs to all,
Erin

= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.