Y'know, I hate to be a grinch about all this discussion and all, but can the
participants please take it off the ML.  These sorts of quasi-political
discussions are really the worst sort of spam.  They rarely, if ever,
change anybody's mind, they don't really help anyone write better
fanfics, they jam up everyone's mailbox, and I doubt that most of us are
really all that interested. 

I normally don't mind spam very much, but it just seems like four out of
every five messages I've received in the last couple days relate to this
topic.  It's obvious that people have strong opinions on this, but I really
don't think that this is an appropriate forum for this stuff.  

tom