Please boost for awareness.

Recently one of my friends posted an introduction post to the official Ubuntu forums.

https://web.archive.org/web/20250905060630/https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/lukas-here-hello-to-all/66658
(original link: https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/lukas-here-hello-to-all/66658 )

Seems fine except for maybe a bit of bad grammar around the "I am also a furry" part right? Well turns out behind the scenes the post was edited to not say "I am queer" before mentioning being a furry, and they got in a lotta trouble with the mods. This led to them no longer feeling welcome on the Ubuntu discourse forums.

The reason given was that the word Queer is a sexual word, which is just patently untrue. Saying you're queer gives less info into your sex life than mentioning your wife/husband, and if that was banned it'd be fucking stupid. Of course by the responses of the mods, it is made clear that that's not the real reason, and instead they're making the decision because of politics.

In the next few posts I'll talk about these extremely problematic moderator responses.
1/5

The worst of the posts is as follows:
"Sorry to intervene, another volunteer moderator here. Point 7 of the general posting guidelines says:

'Politics: This topic has caused serious problems in the past and as such is subject to tight control. Discussion of the politics of open source it permissible in the lounge. No other political posting is permitted in any form in any other area of the forum. (this includes the use of avatars, flags, and other potentially-divisive graphics.) Please find another venue for political discussions'

So in my opinion, if your intention was to show political support for diversity, you should avoid using this flag. This will allow us to refuse the use of a flag for instance saying 'non-queer', If we allow your flag, then we have to admit also other similar political flags, both supporting and opposing diversity.
"

This reply is just fucking dishonest. First off, if you allow people to post the lgbt flag you don't have to also allow people to post Nazi flags or whatever. Like, being queer isn't an ideology. It should be totally fine to say you're queer or straight or whatever, that doesn't mean you also have to let people be Nazis or say hateful things about each other, like wtf? You can literally just say that some flags aren't allowed and some are. (also idk what's with all this talk about flags, they weren't even the thing that got edited). It is totally reasonable to say that everyone should be allowed to express their identity, whether straight or queer, white or black, man or woman, etc; this doesn’t fucking somehow magically create a loophole for people to start hating on other identities.
2/5

Second, the whole idea of things being apolitical is just a vague excuse to discriminate. A few years ago Florida passed a law nicknamed "Don't say gay" which banned teachers from mentioning their sexuality or gender identity to students at all; so if banning queer people from mentioning their identity in your forums is apolitical, then why the fuck is it a more extreme political position than that taken by a far-right politician who literally posted Nazi propaganda on twitter? This fucker is just trying to hide his political extremist views behind a guise of fairness.

This response sure makes it seem like the values of Canonical and Ubuntu are closer to far-right extremism than all the positivity and inclusivity they claim in their policies.
3/5

The next response isn't quite as bad because at least it's fucking honest.

"OK - here goes one other way to look at this as an issue.
Say for the sake of argument I am Christian, As a Christian I follow a set of ethics defined in what we call the Bible, Now in this set of ethics is God's declaration that 'queer' is an abomination. As it is abhorrent then it too is something to avoid, And YES discussion of relition too is not permitted - it is in the same vein as a pronouncement of queer"

Naturally you might think that saying you're queer might equate to saying you're Christian, or saying you're Jewish, which should both be fine; but apparently they equate it to saying you're Christian, and also that you think queer people (other members of the community) are abominations.

If you look past the fact that they talk like Ben Shapiro and ChatGPT had a baby that didn't know how capitalization worked, there is at least a little bit of sense here though. Saying you're queer and saying you're bigoted are the same in that they will both piss people off. If they actually cared about a fair, friendly, and welcoming community, they'd notice that they are also very different in that one is a statement of identity, and the other is a statement of hate towards other members of the community. Another difference is that bigots want queers to not be able to say they're queer, and queers want to not have to hide their identity, so banning both in this silly hypothetical is still giving the bigots what they want and siding against queers. All in all, I can give the benefit of the doubt here and assume they're simply too much of a coward to fight back against bigots in and out of the mod team, so instead they are taking the path of least resistance and telling everyone to be quiet so they don't have to deal with it, while ignoring the inequity of that.
4/5

All in all Canonical and Ubuntu have taken the far right position that people shouldn’t even be allowed to mention their queerness, which gives the extremists what they want, and them not being able to be explicit about their hate (and the mods here are already very implicitly bigoted), is a small loss when they already get their way by forcing us queers into the closet in any of their spaces. On top of that, even though it’s been a couple days so far, the leadership hasn’t done anything and saying queer is seemingly still banned on their forums.

This is absolutely unacceptable, and I recommend anyone who is queer, has queer friends, or just generally cares about people being allowed to live their lives, to not use Ubuntu, spread the word, and not contribute to their community; until they put solid policy in place to make it clear that everyone is welcome and allowed to be themselves in their community.

Collection of evidence:
https://nextcloud.aztinet.eus/s/sxqEDJDZGp7a9rx

This folder includes the screenshots quoted, along with a lot of other screenshots and information not covered by my post.

Original post by the one discriminated against:
https://bark.lgbt/@lukas/115164258497365823

Other post:
https://blahaj.zone/notes/aca8zuhiducu005g

And remember, the more people boost this, the more likely Canonical is to feel pressured to change their policies and take action to help queer people feel included in their community. Queer Ubuntu users deserve to be able to openly be a part of the community and be treated with the same respect as anyone else.

5/5

All in all Canonical and Ubuntu have taken the far right position that people shouldn’t even be allowed to mention their queerness, which gives the extremists what they want, and them not being able to be explicit about their hate (and the mods here are already very implicitly bigoted), is a small loss when they already get their way by forcing us queers into the closet in any of their spaces. On top of that, even though it’s been a couple days so far, the leadership hasn’t done anything and saying queer is seemingly still banned on their forums.

This is absolutely unacceptable, and I recommend anyone who is queer, has queer friends, or just generally cares about people being allowed to live their lives, to not use Ubuntu, spread the word, and not contribute to their community; until they put solid policy in place to make it clear that everyone is welcome and allowed to be themselves in their community.

Collection of evidence:
https://nextcloud.aztinet.eus/s/sxqEDJDZGp7a9rx

This folder includes the screenshots quoted, along with a lot of other screenshots and information not covered by my post.

Original post by the one discriminated against:
https://bark.lgbt/@lukas/115164258497365823

Other post:
https://blahaj.zone/notes/aca8zuhiducu005g

And remember, the more people boost this, the more likely Canonical is to feel pressured to change their policies and take action to help queer people feel included in their community. Queer Ubuntu users deserve to be able to openly be a part of the community and be treated with the same respect as anyone else.

5/5

Update: this was posted on reddit and was locked by a moderator of the subreddit who also claims to be a member of the community council, for unspecified inaccuracies. I would love to know what parts of the post I got wrong so I could fix them but as of writing this it doesn't seem like they've reached out to me about it.

They also claim that the post wasn't edited because of self-identifying as queer at all, as the three different reasons from the first three different people all stated, but instead was for a secret fourth reason to be revealed shortly.

I am looking forward to hearing their full statement and hope they have been having lotsa productive discussions about how to best make the ubuntu community an inclusive and welcoming space for it's queer members!!!!

I will do my best to keep this post updated with more information, make sure to boost the top post so you get notified when I do!!!!

https://web.archive.org/web/20250907224900/https://old.reddit.com/r/Ubuntu/comments/1nb60v2/ubuntu_mod_team_takes_antiqueer_dont_say_gay/nczi15v/