The Charlotte Observer Gets A Letter To The Editor From The Emerson Avenger

The Charlotte Observer's dubious decision to not only completely suspend comments of the internet version of Tim Funk's glowing "puff piece" about the Unitarian Universalist General Assembly ('Liberal denomination stands up for its causes') but to also delete aka "memory hole" ALL of the dozens of comments that had already been submitted in response to Tim's article does not inspire confidence in The Observer's commitment to free speech. Just how much "profanity, obscenity, spam, name-calling or attacking others for their views" was there in the 100+ comments anyway? Not that any of these things actually violate the First Amendment in any case. . .

Most ironically the Unitarian Universalist religious community seems only too happy to allow its "less than perfect" ministers to spout profanity and obscenity of various kinds, engage in intolerant and abusive name-calling, and insultingly attack "others" for their views. Indeed the UUA and its all too aptly named Ministerial Fellowship Committee have repeatedly allowed verbally and psychologically abusive U*U ministers to deeply insult and outright defame good people with complete impunity.

Unitarian Universalists should not be unduly protected from public criticism. Tim's pro-UU article, which might as well have been written by a UU propagandist, contained false and misleading information about UUs. How can the misinformation fed to The Charlotte Observer by Unitarian Universalists be publicly challenged if online commenting is "disabled" and all of the existing comments are relegated to an Orwellian "memory hole"?

Please reinstate the comment function and repost the comments that were "memory holed".

Robin Edgar

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