If there is a single commonality to all such downvoting, then it would be something like "I'm going to hit the minus button for (almost) every post by a particular user(s) that I see." And sometimes that mindset does seem appropriate.

Be wary. There is an implied assumption here that every homosexual muslim thinks homosexuality is morally acceptable.

It isn't. I do ferociously hate the guts of a handful of forumgoers, which very nickname turn my stomach (because, the genie being out of the bottle, I know what's behind their masks, and I also know the very practical consequences of it on real human beings), so I have felt the childish temptation to go on a knee-jerk derep spree atfer some particularly obscene post of them. Never did (though, to be honest, I almost never derepped an individual post either), precisely because I consider such action to be technically unfair, counter-productive, and humiliatingly lame for its perpetrator itself. I feel embarrassed for those who indulge in it, whichever their side.

Not really. I'm well aware that it sometimes isn't the case, homosexuals of all religious and secular background can be socially bullied into self-loathing, denial, and all the more violent homophobia. But the mistake would be to assume, again, a 100% proportion of either, here. It's not required. Knowing that there are muslims comfortable with (their own) homosexuality is sufficient - and it's of course the case for most muslims who do state their homosexuality. Including amongst refugees fleeing islamist theocraties (where indeed, islamophobic cultural pressure can be extremely violent).

False, because my point was "context matters"* not "all muslims are homophobes". That‘s another discussion for another day. And one which I would rather have with someone whose idea of "informed and intellectual discourse" doesn‘t equal to coercing the other side into making broad generalisations.

*SPOILER ALERT: The other point I was trying to make - although in a more implicit, meta sort of way - was that sticking labels on people is stupid. Your knee-jerk attempt to label me a bigot kind of drives that point home, doesn't it?

As I said, it is the only premise under which you can dismiss as hypocrisy Vain's answer to the article that has been thrown at him (and I just developed why this premise was false in case there was an ambiguity about that).

I orginally wanted to reply to that post in tweet length to merely dissolve the artificial contradiction that Tyrrhia was trying to construct (i.e. that respect and even friendship could not be extended towards both the muslim as well as the LGBTQ communities at the same time). In general, this mere attempt to elicit a response – that tries to sell me a 2009 poll as "new, but not in the sense that it just came out" to begin with – is indeed something that I'd usually ignore. Tyrrhia doesn't belong to the Muslim or LGBTQ community and gives a flying shit about either. I had no obligation to respond to the derailing slippery slope shits and giggles baiting mockery that didn't even attempt to make a discernible argument.

But if that's a cop-out for you, all right, let's vet our sources here. The Johann Hari article is a clickbait piece of fake news Huffington "Why should we pay our authors" Post crap which, among other things, speaks of 30 muslims attacking a gay pub in the UK. I can find no other source that speaks of this attack. It likely never happened. It also throws made-up statistics at you, without concrete numbers or a source, like in the dark fantasy works of Thilo Sarrazin. The article has been on the author's own site as well, but has been removed in the meantime, probably because its author considered it embarrassing. It links to the 2009 guardian article but can of course not generally reinforce the credibility of the original gallup poll just by repeating it.
https://aethelreadtheunread.wordpress.com/2011/03/02/can-we-talk-about-johann-haris-shoddy-journalism-now/

The eight year old guardian article is highly interesting actually, because of the differences between countries reported. I have found another guardian article presenting slightly less shocking results from 2016. If both statistics were representative, we would have to assume that the tight-knit British muslim communities have made a significant step weeding out homophobia during the last six years and that they're on a good path. That would follow the general trend as reported by the same institute. The much better results in France or Germany of course don't mean we're done with integration. Just like with some of the Putin propaganda singers on this forum, dealing with fundamentalist Muslim homophobia will require the uncompromising and unmistakable demand that these values are to be universally accepted. But that doesn't put me in hostile opposition to either Islam or the Russian people.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/apr/11/british-muslims-strong-sense-of-belonging-poll-homosexuality-sharia-law

Someone make a wishlist entry.

So no political discussion at all on the forums? And what about places where games and politics intersect? ''Just for games'' may be clear enough of a definition to you, but keep in mind there are people who take part in discussions you don't, and to them, that is very very vague. Ie, region locking / local censoring, is that gaming or politics? Or the diversity and feminism stuff, what is that?

Well, remember the saying "You can get more with a kind word and a gun than with just a kind word."

Just keep moderating and everything'll sort itself out. Don't let hypocrites -- -- tell you it's futile. They want you to give up. Don't.

For the last three months, I've been modding a huge international forum, with a demo leaning South Asian / Middle Eastern. I've seen two infractions (one wish to fight another poster "like a MAN!!!1!!" to prove them wrong, one Holocaust joke), both from Europeans. Otherwise, people swear at website bugs when paid services don't properly work, not each other.

Well, I don't want us to rely solely on that, and luckily we no longer have to. But I wasn't speaking to or about the well known and documented trolls, I was directing this at people who are having this total-derailment grudge match in here, and who are, or at least I thought so, sensible enough to maybe stop.
Apparently I was wrong. Then again maybe I should not have expected anything I say to help, seeing as most of those people probably hate my guts :P

Anyway, since you are here, how about closing this thread and starting a new one? I don't mean punishing anyone, just restoring a little order.

Not if it entails insulting people, nazi manifestos and supporting violence. If, this being the Internet, that means none at all, then so be it.

Indeed, very astute. Did the fact that I'm asking the person who does give me away?

That doesn't seem like a politics problem as much as a people problem. Before wanting every thread with heated discussion to be closed, remember that most of the ''nazi manifestos'' were posted off topic, often in threads like the terrorism thread or threads about terrorist attacks. Closing threads and bringing the discussion to other threads doesn't seem to be a good solution, if you can't see so already.

None of which has anything to do with anything I said.

You said that politics shouldn't be allowed if it leads to all the bad stuff. I said that the bad stuff comes up in random, non political threads, much like it did in this one and that hence, politics discussion might not be the problem as much as people posting anything anywhere. I then said that people will be encouraged to do that if more threads are closed.

Still nothing?