Don't get me wrong. I applaud the efforts of people such as Al Whited to make the game one of equal access and equal opportunity. He has a right to try for such equality, as provided by the First Amendment, and I am not about to stand in his way. I am, however, going to ask a very serious question. Please do not misconstrue this question as taking a stance or as a deviation from anything I've said before. Also, if you just want to see the question, you might as well skip to the end, because I'll be going on for a while in between. There have been many barbs thrown out by everyone here on the issue of whether this policy is discriminatory or just plain misunderstood. At the risk of opening up a can of worms, I am taking this entire statement and putting it both in the Yahoo! club bulletin board and the qb listserv. If R tells me to revise it, I will, but the Yahoo! BBS will contain the "uncensored" version. My concern during all of this diatribing is whether we are looking at this question objectively. I do not wish to claim that Mr. Whited is being overboard in his accusations against CBCI -- the dilemma must exist, else it wouldn't be an issue. However, I wonder if residual bad feelings may be exaggerating the problems. For instance, if there were an analagous case for ACF, would we be as harsh? I hope the answer is a resounding yes. Furthermore, any commentary we make on the law as it stands is simply our opinion, however educated it may be. We do not know a detailed case history on discrimination in competition, nor have we studied the issue at large. We may have taken classes in the pre-law curriculum, but unless someone is on the road to entering the legal profession, I am forced to wonder if his opinion has as much education behind it as he would like to claim. This is no slam on Mr. Whited. I am not saying he is not qualified to post an opinion on whether this is discriminatory or not (I'm avoiding the "r" word here because the method of discrimination is irrelevant; if it were anti-anything, it would be unfair). However, I am taking his opinion and everyone else's as mere opinion, and I encourage everyone to do the same. Yes, you should even weigh my opinion with little behind it; perhaps less so than any of those with real-world experience. What we need, first and foremost, is for someone in or through law school to comment. I know such people exist; some of the more notorious personalities are law students. If any of them have the background necessary to post an expert opinion on the matter, I ask that they do so. Back to the disturbing question at hand: the current discussion thread is important, naturally, but it seems to be incomplete. There's one key element from it missing. Without such an element, all of us are simply flapping our gums. Even worse, people who take the hardest of hardline stances sound vindictive and arrogant if this particular element is nonexistent. Therefore, its absence makes all of this null and void. Its presence, however, brings this to a whole new level. If the question can be answered in the affirmative, we have with us a powerful tool to use against CBCI. Suddenly, they will probably be forced to face the issue head-on in a very real way. We can get them to alter the wording, clarify it, or eliminate it altogether. Then, in many minds, the mission would be accomplished. As the original post was too long, I will continue my thoughts in a subsequent message. Andy
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