@TerryLewis I'd like to emphasize an important distinction implicit in my comments and questions so far: I am assuming that the CoC change under discussion would apply to moderators only, not all users of the site.

The job of a moderator is to, well, moderate disputes, and to accomplish this it may be necessary to suppress one's own strongly-held beliefs and apply the stated rules fairly and objectively. Equally it may be necessary to adopt language or behaviors that are incongruous with one's normal patterns. SE has the right to expect a high standard of neutrality and professionalism f…

@PaulSiegel, you write, "it is other people debating whether or not [they have] a say in who [they are] as a person."

I'll speak for myself here rather than for anyone else, but from my own perspective:

1. Who I am as a person is not affected by anything external to me. I honestly don't understand what that means. I am who I am. And perhaps this breaks my heart for others more than anything, because I can't imagine what it would be like to (forgive me... I know of no better way to say this) need that kind of affirmation of my personhood. I'm willing to learn why others feel that way... if…

4. I'm trying to speak gently here, lest I offend and/or get this post deleted, but again, I'm trying to be honest. Pain is not evil. It is a warning. Without pain, we would not survive very long.

Now notice that I'm not saying that CAUSING unnecessary pain is not evil... only that pain itself is not evil. If we are continually hurting, that is nature's (I would say God's) way of letting us know that something is wrong.

I believe it is painful to live in conflict with reality. If you ignore the reality that the range eye is on and you put your hand on it, you get burned. If you try to bre…

Regarding policies to promote dialog... that is certainly a harder thing, but I think the biggest thing is to get out of the way. The problem isn't an institutional problem... it's a individual problem. Change cannot be dictated from the top-down... it must start with the people getting their hearts right and then our politics, our media, our entertainment, will all follow suit. That's why freedom of speech is so terribly important... but I'm repeating myself.

Removing one side of voices from a disagreement only appears to end the conflict. Living together as a free people in a free countr…

@TerryLewis I found little to disagree with in your remarks. A healthy resolution to the disagreements under discussion will require patience and resilience from everyone involved over a long period of time. And the mechanism for change is dialog - one conversation at a time.

But now let us place ourselves in the position of SE, and let us imagine that one of their goals is to design a site where this dialog can occur. (Given recent behavior, it is not clear that this is in fact their goal, but we can imagine.) This cannot be achieved by getting out of the way - the internet contains a…