Furry ban in Cologne cathedral

Apart from the fact that she was THERE during the original "protest" ... I may be mistaken, but from what I recall, of all the posters here, Monalisa and I were the only ones actually present, at least as long as I was there.

The cathedral personnel did hold themselves gracefully, but most furries were also fairly polite, too. Also, the owners were very willing to compromise and the situation clearly improved during the end. There was the occasional exception (especially that voice imitating person), but there was also quite a bit of furry-bashing from people associating with the cathedral staff (although not a part of their group).

I have part on the discussion on file, since I made of copy to send to Alyx, who couldn't attend. I'm not going to post it here, but if you're interested, send me an IM. It's in German, though. The transcript will put to rest any notions of "evil furries beleaguering innocent churchgoers".

I dont see what the big deal is. Its a Thread. Theres a lot that are nastier.

Ive never reported any thread or any poster. Even those monstrous flame wars where I was getting beat up by 3/4 of the posters and direct insults were thrown at me.

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This whole thing sounds as simple as - They have a virtual replica church - they dont want to see non-humans in it. Likely becuase they dont want their church to look silly.

To some of us, of course - its the ban that looks silly.

If there had been no ban, I wonder how many furries they'd get. Probably not a lot.

you can also substitute Lesbian with any number of sims out there that require a certain dress code as well. the only reason this is a big deal is because its a "church".

More of a pixellized representation of a church.

True... it isn't consecrated as a 'holy building', it will never be licensed by the real life authorities as such, and it doesn't look like it is likely to be used for religious gatherings either. Hasn't got any seats that I could see, unless they hold 'standing only' services in the real place.

It seems to me to be more the church 'protecting their image' in a similar way to when Sony used images of Manchester cathedral (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/manchester/6736809.stm) in a violent shoot-em-up without permission.

whoa -

is the REAL Colonge Cathedral the ones worried about their image?

I was under the impression its just SL people.

but thats just the point, if i pay 300usd, or lire or marks etc, a month for a piece of virtual land, i should be entitled to do as i please, as long as i don't break any laws. RL or SL.
when you "demand" that a sim owner do this and that and should allow this and that, you are "dictating" or implemeting your own set of morals and standards on that person.

to play the rosa parks card was, at the very least, a poor example to use. You are comparing a woman who, by her own admission, was just too tired to move. as a black woman(yes i am a black woman), i applaud her for standing up to a system that treated an entire race like garbage.

this is not the case here. no furries were beaten near to death because of a virtual build, no furries were hung from trees because they have fur instead of skin. so please do not compare a chapter in civil rights history, to what amounts to a tempest in teapot.

it is merely one group(and supporters) screaming unfair at a religious build. and thats the main reason they are upset. its a religious build. no one is screaming at the Isle of Lesbos for being women only, no one is screamign at Gorean sims for thier strictly adhered to rules, no one is crying foul at Caledon(or some parts of it) for having thier strict dress code. yet, here is a "church", with thier own set of rules, and its suddenly wrong?

and the Colonge Cathedral is not the only church build out there. my partner and i have been to one that is simply beautiful and could care less if you show up in a bunnytail and thong. why not give your traffic to that one, instead of protesting this one and giving them traffic stats? or wasting an entire forum thread debating the issue?

That's why a lot of the uproar on this issue amuses me. Religion has nothing to do with it in my opinion. It is simply acase of a Sim owner controlling acces o his sim, which is his right, and a group being singled out for exclusion and being indignant, again, well within their rights. All the rest, while making for entertaining reading, is nonsense, in my opinion.

I had heard that the popular story of Rosa being too exhausted to give up her seat wasnt the case, and she was already involved in some activities concerning Civil rights - so I looked it up.

"People always say that I didn't give up my seat because I was tired, but that isn't true. I was not tired physically, or no more tired than I usually was at the end of a working day. I was not old, although some people have an image of me as being old then. I was forty-two. No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in." - Rosa Parks.

Rosa of course was a brave woman, And is much to be admired.

I agree completely that this church anti-furry stuff is nothing compared to the civil right movement in America.

That said it doesnt mean they shouldnt be allowed to complain. Just that the land owner has no reason to listen to them if he or she doesnt want to.

I'm not 100% sure one way or the other to be honest.

If the designers were regular SL players they ought to know about the various "non human" avatars and discussed it with the customer beforehand of the potential risks/dangers of excluding a significant portion of the community. That's why I would have thought it was the church's request rather than the designer, becuase it's what I would have done. I guess someone can clarify or get a definitive answer?

i stand corrected. in my haste to post i missed those two words. thanks for the correction

Did you see this picture ?



Isnt that Dr. Martin Luther King looking a lil sleepy in the background?

I was a vampire recently and I drove past a church. Made a point of not even going onto the grounds.

New here?

no, and yes i know about the Gorean/Furry war, and the either like it or not threads.
however, and maybe i missed a few forum threads, i have never seen it on this level. i just don't believe in going where im not wanted, which means my money and traffic number donations as well as my recommendation to a must see build is not wanted either. apprently though they have reached a compromise.
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@Collette,
Yes He does. makes You wonder what He would say now don't it?

Oh ya, dat was one ting I could not get, you can't visit it during off hours, which is, well, almost always. Well, unles you cam in, of course.

Mari

Okay, I vowed back @#272 (cited) to just eat pie through the rest of this thread, but please read the rest of that post to see that I explicitly distinguished my use of that analogy from any relevance to the Cologne cathedral situation in SL; rather, I was responding to a larger RL issue that had been raised by another poster's comments. I'd also just call attention to my post way back @#143, to wit: "Genuine outrage over something like this is misguided. There are plenty of tragic RL situations for which outrage is the only appropriate response, compared to which this all is of no consequence."

/me goes back to his pie.

/me steals your pie and goes back to read cited posts.

Well its always good to remember this is a SL forum. So people can still be outraged by stuff in the real world, but appear to be dis-proportionately affected here in this place.

It doesnt mean they dont really have a sense of proportion. Merely that this forum is only a micro-cosm.

That's what I don't understand ... what they should have done is had a notecard dispenser giving all the necessary information about the build, and have 'staff' there between certain hours if you wanted to talk about it.

Most builds, however, are 'self explore' for good reasons. Why they chose to be different (and pretty much exclude non-german speakers, which is the majority of SL) I guess makes sense to them, and them alone. Aren't the point of most builds to attract visitors?

The term "furry" originates in English so even if the sign was in German it references terminology they likely didn't fully understand. The point being that neither your or I know what they were thinking when that original sign was created so you can't assert as fact what is only your assumption. This whole issue was due to people jumping to conclusions in the absence of facts.

And no one in SL is 'masquerading' at all, lmao. Just because people 'dress up' in SL doesn't mean they do irl. I'm real sure that the makers of this place look EXACTLY like their avie irl, shea.... I'll be sure to ban this place myself and let everyone I know to do the same. I'm not a furry myself but I do have friends in SL of all sorts and to see a certain group get banned based on their looks and nothing more is completely ridiculous.

Granted, people can do whatever they want to do with the land they pay for but damn it would be nice if we could all just damn get along in this world and look towards the inside of a person and not the outside.

But you got better?

Rehashing pages 1-20...

So build your own church on land you own, restrict it to furries, and quitcher whinin'.