Self-Righteous Cowards

[fuzzyoctopus]

This boils my blood.

A while back the Daily Universe (BYU's student newspaper) started getting regular letters arguing for and against legalizing gay marriage.  Everything was more or less civil and adult, (there were of course a few "you'll all burn in hell because you don't hate gays" type letters, but we mostly ignored them.)

Two of my former roommates wrote letters to the editor, intelligently discussing the topic.  One of the rules of the letters in the Universe is that you must sign your full name.  

Thanks to the wonderful BYU directory which lets you get info on ANY student, today, some BYU student sent out mass, unsolicited email, (which is spam, by law) to all the people who wrote any letter to the editor that was even partially in favor of gay marriage, my two roomates included.  This person was rude and self-righteous, insisting that gay marriage is a direct threat to society, and that the people who wrote letters were all bad bad people.  And they didn't even have the courage to sign their name.

I would like to beg everyone here to send an email to this person, worded as kindly you'd like, telling them what a rude coward they are, and how they should be ashamed of themselves.    Use a junk email address if you don't want to worry about it, they're not hard to get.

[email protected]

Sure, it's childish and vindictive of me to ask this. So be it.  Feel free to ignore this post with the knowledge that posting it has made me feel better.

[Tage]

Considering the topic of your post, his email address is wonderfully ironic.

[fuzzyoctopus]

Yes, and I'd like others to do unto her as she's done unto them.

[House of Mustard]

Can you post his email?  I'd be interested to see what I'd be retaliating against.

[fuzzyoctopus]

From : Honesty Integrity  
Sent : Thursday, April 8, 2004 12:51 PM
To : [assorted e-mail addresses]
Subject : Gay marriage has no direct threat to society?


Elder Oaks [being a General Authority of the LDS church -- one of 15 Head Honchos, in non-LDS terms, I suppose] said something about abortion that deals with the principle of choice and the principle of legislating morality:

"If we say we are anti-abortion in our personal life but pro-choice in public policy, we are saying that we will not use our influence to establish public policies that encourage righteous choices on matters God’s servants have defined as serious sins. I urge Latter-day Saints who have taken that position to ask themselves which other grievous sins should be decriminalized or smiled on by the law due to this theory that persons should not be hampered in their choices. Should we decriminalize or lighten the legal consequences of child abuse? of cruelty to animals? of pollution? of fraud? of fathers who choose to abandon their families for greater freedom or convenience?

Similarly, some reach the pro-choice position by saying we should not legislate morality. Those who take this position should realize that the law of crimes legislates nothing but morality. Should we repeal all laws with a moral basis so that our government will not punish any choices some persons consider immoral? Such an action would wipe out virtually all of the laws against crimes.

In today’s world we are not true to our teachings if we are merely pro-choice. We must stand up for the right choice. Those who persist in refusing to think beyond slogans and sound bites like pro-choice wander from the goals they pretend to espouse and wind up giving their support to results they might not support if those results were presented without disguise."

Gay marriage will ruin our society and you are helping by promoting it.  God will not look kindly on you for supporting such an abomination.

[House of Mustard]

Not that I want to start an argument, but the Oaks quote makes a good point.  The last paragraph (not Oaks' words) is smug, self-righteous and condescending, but it doesn't mean that the arguement is bad.

Just sayin'.

[fuzzyoctopus]

And it wouldn't bother me if they hadn't taken the immense amount of time to go through TWO MONTHS of papers, get the name of every person they wanted to target, and use Stalkernet to look up EVERY email address, and then not sign their name.

If they're not doing anything wrong, why didn't they sign their name?

[House of Mustard]

Well, I agree with you there -- the guy's (I assume he's a guy--could be a girl) methods are really stupid, and I doubt that's he's winning anyone to his cause.

Still, I think I'll pass on spamming him back just cause he's a jerk.  It would only be a yelling match -- using his ineffective methods against him would be just as ineffective.

[fuzzyoctopus]

Well if you know of anything else to do - like being able to find out a real name, so we could report him to the university for spamming, that'd be great.

[Spriggan]

It's a hotmail address Fuzzy so there's no way to find out with out sueing Hotmail.  I've allready checked the hotmail memberlist and that e-mail isn't one that anyone has filled out any personaly info on.  And I don't beleave it's spam either.  It is unwarrented and lacking of taste, the person should have written a counter letter.  The e-mail is more harrasment, it's basicly the same as if the person called everyone and tryed to prove them wrong that way.

[EUOL]

You could always take his email and sign it up for a couple dozen 'hey, give us your email and we'll send you lots of cool email coupon' sites.  I'll bet you could get him getting so much spam that he hits his meg-limit on Hotmail regularly, even if he empties it daily.

[Gemm: Rock & Roll Star; Born to Rock]

I dunno EUOL. With my Yahoo account I get in the upwards of 300-350+ spam after a few days of not checking my mail. And it usually isn't all that high on my limit(2 or 4 MB). So if hotmail does as Yahoo, and anything that is sent to your 'Bulk' or spam box won't count toward your limit.

[fuzzyoctopus]

no, with hotmail you get a lot less space than yahoo, and bulk *does* count.

[Mad Dr Jeffe]

Write them back and tell them that god wont forgive him for not showing compassion and that you pity him, you may goad him into making some sort of threat, which can then be brought to the police and the subsequent warrent can be used to get their records at hotmail.

Usally works at my call center, except of course we use the FBI and Secret Service as our enforcement...

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

That's devious.
I like it.