Recently an individual has posted, twice now, links to a web page I consider inappropriate for a family-friendly forum. I have deleted those links. In this person's second post, the comment was made, "So RinkWorks supports censorship?" I wish to address this question, partly to the person who keeps trying to post that link, but mostly to any readers who may have seen the posts before I deleted them and may be concerned about where I stand on the issue.

I am adamantly against censorship of any kind. This poster, however, does not understand the issue to the smallest degree, if he thinks by raising the question in this particular situation even makes sense. It is also indicative of a trend in our society where complex moral issues are polarized into two equally shallow viewpoints that can be summed up in a word each: "for" or "against." In today's shallow society, you're either for affirmative action or against it. You're for gun control or against it. You're for abortion or against it. You're for capital punishment or against it. You're for censorship or against it. Qualifiers are treated as irrelevant, when, in fact, it is impossible, naive, and short-sighted to assume any of the above issues could possibly be given fair due without any.

In the shallowest sense, I am against censorship. But deleting a post on this message forum is not censorship. Censorship means that expression is suppressed -- totally, or at least significantly. It is not censorship if a particular form of expression is disallowed in one place if it is freely expressable elsewhere, in a forum of comparable effectiveness. It is not censorship, for example, to make it a rule not to shout political propaganda during the performance of an opera. It is not censorship, for example, if the owners of a building erase the graffiti on it. It is not censorship, for example, to enforce a rule that a particular message forum on the Internet remain family-friendly. It would if this were the only message forum on the Internet. Then, by virtue of being in control of the only outlet of its type, I would inherit the responsibility to provide complete and total freedom with regard to what gets expressed here. I couldn't even delete "Make Money Fast" posts, unless I could demonstrate, on a case by case basis, their unlawfulness.

Thank heaven this is not the case. The Message Forum is one among many. I do not oppose this poster's right to have the web site he has. I do not oppose his right to advertise it anywhere but in this specific forum -- for which I have established guidelines that I expect to be followed. In no way should this -- or could this, by a mildly intelligent mind with the least bit of understanding of the issue -- be construed as an advocation of censorship.