I'm glad to see this come up. I don't mind the NFR topics themselves. I like to see the discussion, and would welcome the opportunity for thoughtful debate. However, that opportunity rarely comes. We are cautioned to avoid politics at parties, because it only takes a second for the debate to get heated, and for relationships to suffer. On these topics there are simply some folks (on each side) that hate/fear/detest the other side too much to actually discuss and debate the issues civilly. What's the old saw, "Liberals think all conservatives are evil, and conservatives think all liberals are stupid?" If any two of those individuals are in the crowd, civil debate can't happen. They always are in the crowd, because there's a little piece of one there in each of us, just waiting to flame. So you either have to tolerate them, spank them or avoid them.

I think what Jenny did over at Ifish was smart. They created a second board, and moved the NFR topics to that board.

I'm one of those who comes here less because of this stuff. I asked for civility here myself a while back, and caught a lot of flack from several folks. The comment was made, if you don't like it, go somewhere else. So I did.