Regardless of anyone's political leanings and feelings on the matter, Shauna's language is really inappropriate and really has no place on the board.

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/Forum95/HTML/001674.html

I second that emotion...

I disagree. Let it show.

This is why I do not think a Gay forum is a good idea. FlyerTalk should be about one subject... TRAVEL. Doesn't matter if you are green, red, pink, gay, straight, jewish,muslim,indian,asian,2 feet tall, whatever. When the board begins to segment into subgroups we begin to offend and leave out others. FT is not a dating board. Clearly the poster could have posted in a less offensive manner. Hower the post is not inaccurate or using curse words. Clearly the Christian Coalation would not approve of gay relationships. And I'm sure the gay posters probably would not approve of the Christian Coalition. The point is why offend any subgroup and limit the appeal of FT to a group of niche flyers? Let's leave sexuality, politics, religion and all those other things your not supposed to talk about at a dinner party, alone. Let's have a big tent about TRAVEL and only travel. IF we go down a road of segmentation, pretty soon we will have to have forums for each religon's travel. Think i'm kidding? There has been a very big controversy with Orthdox Jews wanting to fly in body bags because some airlines were flying over cemetaries (which is offensive to them). And each nationality might want a forum. Smokers might want a forum. Pretty soon we have 200 forums. Therefore, I suggest the poster edit the offensive post, not in content, but in descriptive terms. I also suggest the other posters not use FT as a dating board. Imagine if we had threads on any topic in FT community. "Any FT who do jigsaw puzzles?" or woodworking? or unicycle riding? Each of these things might be neat hobbies... BUT, FT is about one thing... TRAVEL. Anything else is OMNI. Anyway, that's my 2 cents. Lets keep FT great, not by limiting speach... but, by talking ONLY TRAVEL.

While you are removing this post, Randy, could you also run this "Shauna" person through the multiple handles scenario?

I find it somewhat ironic that this person has ONLY posted on controversial topics and there was a lot of speculation when this handle was first created on that AS flight attendant thread that it was created by a regular poster trying to stir things up.

Oh well... once a troll, always a troll....

Axe the graphic descriptions from Shauna's post.

Ditto what cigarman said about the forum.

I won't connect the actions of a single member to the issue of GLBT as there has been great comment from many members on this. However I did find that the post itself was not in being with the goals for FlyerTalk and immediately locked the thread down. Please read my comments on this as the last post on that thread. Thank you Matthew for bringing this to my attention via email because i would have been late to it any other way.

I will look into the other comments made here regarding members. I have suspended three members posting privileges in the last week because of such multiple behavior, so don't think I don't look into these things.

Now, if you really want to experience the best of FlyerTalk, let the Canadian members of FlyerTalk know that I have secured the presense of the Chairman of the Air Canada Aeroplan program for a live chat on Feb. 7th and have moved the US Airways live chat to the 12th of February and think you'll find our timing very, very timely for these two chats. If you haven't been following things, the Air Canada contingent is very concerned and they will now have their moment with the big guy, Rupert Duchesne.

Randy, where in FlyerTalk [B}should{/B] these kind of discussions go? Are you saying that while it's all right to suggest other member meet up for a drink, or discuss Mike Tyson, or telemarketers, it's not all right to discuss meeting other board members who also happen to be gay?

Is there a place where these discussions should go? If there's a place, why not move this thread there rather than lock it down?

Am I to understand that no posts are permitted on FlyerTalk that do not pertain to earning miles or points?

I don't understand this very well. "Members can seek others out by the types of threads they frequent"? I don't want to be quick to assume this is some sterotyping comment, because I do get the impression that you're not personally anti-gay.

For what it's worth, I didn't really see this as a pick-up thread, more like a "hey are there any members out there who are a part of my community?"

but we like to be noticed!!!! How else do we meet up and form 20 year relationships?? (ok, i'm dreaming with that one.. longest i've had is 8 months)....

don't mind me... I'm the 23 year old flying United First or Business that carries a teddy bear or 3 foot long scooby doo, wears pajama pants, and a t shirt when I fly (sometimes my scooby slippers too!)

-nate

I've participated in the 7-page long thread discussing the creation of a GLBT Travel Forum at FlyerTalk; I also added a comment to the FT Community thread after Shauna's post.

I think cigarman's argument above is about the first reasonable one that I've read from an active, long time member of FT (and a member of the TalkBoard) who is against the creation of a GLBT Travel forum. Cigarman, I think you should post your opinion to the main thread on this subject cited above; it may help that discussion advance in some way. Just an idea.

Please remember that the original request for a GLBT Forum at FlyerTalk was for the Travel Boards, not the Miles Boards.

These are both VERY good points, IMO.

I tend to agree with cigarman, that we need to focus more on travel-related topics, but I would not mind seeing some (or all!) of these forums created on other boards and venus (flyerinterests.com, anyone?). Travel is what brings us together in this venue, and it should be our primary focus.

Travel it may be, but when FTers get together, don't the gals want to get together while the guys do their thing at the pubs, so can't the gays recognise each other and hang out together.

We need diversity. Bigotry, we don't need.

HUH???

I've never seen this happen at any of the FT events that I've been to.

Frankly, if I were at a FT event and told "okay, this subgroup is going to all go out now... buh bye", I would be a bit ticked.

No offense, but I really feel like some of you have NO idea what goes on at FT events...

These responses are really off topic for this post which is titled "Randy please remove this post" There are other threads that would best contain this discussion I think. Based on Randy's criteria in shutting down the "Community post" shouldn't the
"Pet Peeve Faucet" post should be removed as well as the random post talking about people watching from the window of the office buildings.

Personally I don't really believe this, if people want to discuss so be it, just keep it in the right folders, like Omni or community.

What posts should be removed? That's the question at hand.