These sick people that Salon has paraded out in public only serve to alert the rest of this sick, crazy world that transformation doesn't work, that if you're a sinner, that's it. You're done. Stick a fork in yourself.

If real healing transformation takes place in any of these individuals, will Salon be there to report the miracle? Probably not.

We focus on what we want to hear and believe only what we have set our minds to believing. Everything else is screened out or otherwise delegitimized so that we can go on living our tragic lives towards an increasingly bitter end.

People can and do change, but Hollywood would be the last place a real seeker would look to find their salvation. It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man/woman to make it into the Kingdom of Heaven.

Once there, the sick and silent majority left behind don't want to hear about a way out of their self imposed exile and other existentialist miseries. It's just not "good" news from a media standpoint.

And yet it is the only GOOD NEWS that there is left to hear.

We need lions, tigers and bears.

Provided that writers aren't going to be STRICTLY and DIRECTLY held accountable for the opinions of the masses, I think instant feedback is a good thing.

Just because a human can string a bunch of words together to form a complete sentence does not make them humane or their personality viable in the public sphere. They need to know that and they need to be treated accordingly by the blogosphere. It is good, if qualitative, information. If a writer really wants to get to the bottom of something, they can perform a quantitative study to determine just how close to the mark a particular set of opinions expressed in the blogosphere actually are. And a whole new cottage industry is born.

I also believe that it is not healthy to be constantly whining, complaining, criticizing and finding fault with people who simply view reality from a wholely different perspective. We need to learn from this phenomenon and move on, never forgetting that people we agree with need our support, too. Controversy sells because it has aspects of catharsis associated with it, but people also need to understand more about what it means to be a human being, instead of bitching at other human beings because they are uncomfortable with their lot in life.

Meaning that this medium is a mirror and a polished mirror provides the best reflection. As long as I have the right to squelch and screen out the opinions of people I know aren't interested in seeing things clearly, let it all roll out. The information is useful to someone, somewhere at some point.

I've been writing online since the Compuserve days. If I haven't found a good reason to turn off the spiggot, wholesale, I don't think any reasonable person can.

As Karl Popper once suggested, however, we need to be on the look out for unreasonable people. When we spot them, we need to call them on it and keep honking until they either knock it off or move on to greener pastures. Just because the English language has no linguistic way of resolving the issue of intolerance of the intolerant does not mean that we have to tolerate the intolerant. As Popper said, if the tolerant tolerate the intolerant, soon neither the tolerant nor the intolerant will exist.

If all we're getting from a writer or a blogger is spew with no substance or experience to back it up, then it's time to become intolerant of the intolerant.

You will be greatly missed, but may your presence among us as pure spirit strengthen our resolve to carry on your great task.

The refugee from the academy bludgeoning a poet was a bit too thoughtless for my taste.

We live amidst a colony that ranges in predilections from Charles Manson to Mohandas Ghandi. And everything in between. Just because there are people outside of the norm doesn't make them sub-human or deserving of utter disrespect. Just because there are people who hold the whole utter goofiness of humanity inside their heads doesn't mean that we need to set them up for political haymakers.

Did anyone ever take Oscar Wilde to task for some of his peccadillos? Certainly not to the degree that Salon has here.

I loved, "Fall," not because it was sexually deviant, but because I could overlook that and see the heart that went into making that film from that perspective.

The world needs more Eric Schaeffer's...albeit without the sex between consenting children oddness. For all the inner work Eric has done, he's missed the need to be compassionate towards those who see sex and sexuality from a completely different angle than he does. That lack of compassion he can be fairly called on to explain, but the rest of this stuff is effluent. It doesn't belong in a public forum.