> (Though there might be riots if we keep these threads going too long...)
>
> I sure hope not. I hope that Rinkworks is a place we can discuss such topics without becoming personal. It seems I disagree with most of the regulars (who are willing to get into such a discussion). Yeah, this is one of those topics like the death penalty where you can't change someone's mind. But I wanted to put forth my reasons, and I wanted to hear other's. If people think I was foolish or inflammatory for posting this, oh well....

I didn't mean it that way. I guess now I have to apologize for sounding like I was attacking you with that silly throwaway line. :) I respect your opinion and I pretty much liked your post even though I disagreed with it. (I would be a little more cautious about saying things about adoption without doing some heavy research, as from the little I've heard the business is not as simple or as easy as many think it is. But I'm no expert either.) But I admire your courage in making that post and your willingness to apologize for possible offense.

It's not that I'm really that afraid of things getting personal; from what I've seen everyone here is mature enough to debate without the forum degenerating into alt.flame. :) This is why I like smaller forums like this better than USENET where eventually you're guaranteed to get a teenage AOLer screaming swear words at people for no apparent reason. But I shouldn't really talk, being a teenage AOLer myself, though neither by choice. (Both are my parents' fault, one for subscribing to the service and the other for not conceiving me earlier. Okay, so that last one is kind of specious, but I blame my parents for everything anyway, so why not that? :) )

It's just that, though, like some people pointed out, these are the threads that tend to keep coming back and coming back and coming back and never dying. But there's enough new people here, me included, to keep them interesting, though I can understand a veteran's reluctance to talk about the death penalty and abortion *again*. So here's hoping we can get through the good parts of the debate pretty fast and be ready to stop before we start repeating ourselves. (If all else fails and the thread threatens to break free of its origins and become a self-reproducing carnivorous life form like the holodeck organism on Star Trek, Sam can use the Iron Fist (tm) and shut the thread down by force; that's the real beauty of a moderated forum.) Until then, might as well enjoy our freedom of speech, eh? :)