Amazing: that posting at America magazine's "In All Things" blog by Valerie Schultz I mentioned two days ago? The contributor to the thread following Valerie Schultz's posting who signs himself as John--no last name--and who wrote that the Catholic church teaches that homosexuality is a mental disorder needing treatment has still been allowed to flaunt America's rules for those contributing to blog discussions.
He has still not been asked to sign his last name to his posting, though two other contributors to this thread noted the lack of a last name in his case, and one of the two mentioned America's rules for posters which require one to sign one's full name. He's the only person who has not signed his full name in this discussion thread.
And yet, as I noted back last November, when I responded to a contributor named John Stangle at an America discussion and evidently said what was not acceptable as I pushed back against what I saw as homophobic disinformation in Stangle's comments on the thread, I found my statements deleted. When I discovered that America is capable of censoring contributors to these discussions who push back against homophobia, while permitting homophobic statements to stand in these blog discussions, I stopped contributing to discussions at the America site.
I'd surely like to know who the John is who has been permitted to remain anonymous in the Valerie Schultz thread. He seems to have quite a bit of pull with America, since he's allowed to flaunt rules which apply to all the rest of those making comments at this site.
How does it help productive conversation at this Catholic blog site, I wonder, when the rules seem to bend in the case of some contributors and not others? And when they appear to bend in the direction of homophobia?
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