After this weekend’s CONvergence 2019 in Minneapolis is over, the committee will introduce changes to its code of conduct that will consider people’s conduct elsewhere than at CONvergence itself when administering antiharassment and other related policies.
They regard the changes as part of the effort to encourage diversity, inclusion, and to make people feel safe when they attend the con.
The committee outlined the effects of the new philosophy in a mass email:
…Our purview will no longer stop at the end of the convention, but rather we will hold our members to account for their behavior and themselves year round. Unacceptable actions and behavior will not be tolerated whether they happen at the convention or abroad; if it is harming people, if it is damaging to our community, it is not acceptable, and we will address such actions and behaviors swiftly and fairly.
At the same time, we will handle with compassion those of our members who do not intend to, but nevertheless, transgress some boundaries through ignorance or failing to evolve with the times. We will assist, as far as possible, our members who need extra help and guidance in changing and becoming better. We stand the best chance of helping our members to evolve constructively and will compassion and our goal will be to assist in the redemption of those honest and sincere enough to recognize their issues and seek assistance….
Lauren Sindt, Director of CONvergence’s Hospitality Division previewed some of the new language, and also explained to File 770 why the new policy will be implemented after this year’s event:
We do have new language for that section of our policy language. However, unfortunately, it was not finalized until after our 2019 guide went to press. As such, we will not be updating the language that you reference until after the convention. It is important that all of the published policies are consistent during the convention itself,
However, the new policy will state that CONvergence is not responsible for solving disagreements and interpersonal problems that may arise between individual members outside of the convention but that CONvergence reserves the right to deny membership to any individual found to have behaved in a manner contrary to the Core Values of CONvergence and any event within or adjacent to the local community, or who is deemed to pose a legitimate threat to the safety, inclusivity, or overall health of CONvergence, its membership, its parent organization, or event venues.
We will also be encouraging members to contact the CONvergence Operations department or the Board of Directors with any concerns that they may have about specific individuals or their presence at the convention.
Sindt gave several reasons for the change:
There are a variety of factors that went into the decision to make this statement to our membership. There has been an overall philosophical shift within our organization that has been building momentum, often behind the scenes, for the past several years. With our move to a new location and the overall theme of reinvention for the 2019 convention, this seemed an appropriate time to make our current perspective, expectations, and philosophical underpinnings clear to our membership.
As more and more conventions rolled out antiharassment policies this past decade, committees have generally taken the position of enforcing their codes of conduct only on those trying to join their specific convention. That has caused some fans to question why they should feel safe attending their local con if someone banned elsewhere is still able to join. But another aspect is: Can their local con get the information they need to evaluate someone’s CoC violation at another convention? It will be interesting to learn how CONvergence works out all the issues involved.
[Thanks to TYP for the story.]
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I’m not able to make CONvergence this year, so yours is the first account I’ve heard of this. Immediate reaction: good idea. Secondary reaction: very good idea.
Honestly, if a convention has it on good authority that someone is not only a violator of con rules and general human propriety — especially when it comes to things like stalking, unwelcome touching, and worse — there’s no reason why they should just pass the problem person along to the next parish, er. convention.
And by “good authority,” I do not mean anonymous Facebook posts, sourceless rumors, and the like. I mean evidence with some meat on it, the kind of evidence that’ll get a person tossed from a convention. Bravo, CONvergence!
We’re gonna make a list, decide if you’re naughty or nice…
Will this include records on paying traffic tickets, picking up after yourself, other mundane (as in non-fannish) actions? And will there be some sort of investigative committee to find out whether people are as guilty as social media posts claim they are?
Let the lawyers loose (on both sides)!
All academic for me; I don’t ever plan to attend this convention.
CONvergence has been doing some great stuff. I saw a Facebook post today describing various cartoon signs reminding people about invisible disabilities, yielding at accessible bathrooms, etc., with that great CONvergence artwork. (It was in the Fans for Accessible Conventions group so I don’t think a link would work.) All of this makes me more interested in checking it out some time.
@Andrew & @David – While I agree that the changes are a postive, I was startled by getting a mass email, just before the Con, with none of background provided by the comments above.
I wonder if this policy will also apply to members of the BoD whom have previously had harassment lawsuits filed against them?
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Josh:
If you know something, take it with the con instead of wondering here. Then you will have a clear answer you can inform us of.
I wonder if people who are members of a church with a traditional view of sexuality (i.e,. heteronormative) are welcome at CONvergence.
Do you wonder if people who are heterosexual christians are welcome or do you wonder if people who think that christian heterosexuality is the only acceptable norm are welcome?
Bill: You know the answer. It depends what the “Heteronormative” Christian person does when they meet someone LGBTQ+ and if that BEHAVIOUR crosses the line.
Nobody knows what’s in your heart until you tell them.
Adopt a live and let live smiling attitude and nobody will blink. They might even say “That Bill was a nice guy, I enjoyed meeting him”. Some more obvious and overtly LGBTQ+ may well see through your intent, but will likely also adopt a ‘live and let live’ stance.
Nobody minds if you’re a Christian (except Maybe some of the truly obnoxious loud evangelical atheists, and they’ll get their arses handed to them by the many other Christians and other religious people present without your help). They may find you annoying if you bring it up in literally every conversation, or if you try to convert them, especially if your conversion attempts cross the line into harassment or target other faiths. But that’s an easy pitfall to avoid. Lots and lots of extant Christian congoers already have.
And if you think being gay will send people to hell but don’t Tell Them So or bother them for existing in public, then there is no issue. Go, have fun, bite your lip once or twice. No problem.
Asking people not to commit PDAs in front of you in a smaller space will be given side-eye if your idea of a PDA is holding hands, or if you don’t ask the same of overly affectionate straight people, or you start demanding it in absurdly large spaces (the dealer’s room or every hallway) or dictating instead of making a polite request. And can cross into harassment if you don’t leave people alone after the initial request.
Start saying aloud that you think they should all be put in camps or conversion therapy, and you will quickly be marked “that homophobic so-and-so”, and if it isn’t restricted to those specific forums or discussions meant to be open to contentious opinions (Some panels are, some aren’t), you’ll be getting into reportable territory.
Start shouting down people and frothing and flailing if they wear a rainbow, and you get thrown out probably so fast you’ll barely finish a sentence. Because that BEHAVIOUR is unacceptable.
(NB: I consider shouting down an active Nazi or Confederate flag waver – and no I don’t mean “a conservative”, I mean someone wearing or holding the paraphernalia and chanting their slogans – appropriate; your ConCom may vary.)
I’ll try and spell it out a little more. Will participation in a church that has a traditional view of sexuality (that homosexual activity is a sin and that sex within a marriage between a man and a woman is blessed) be viewed as a reason to exclude the person from CONvergence?
Why would it? Has the church got a reputation for harassing people on the street or picketing funerals? Has the individual got such a reputation? Was he arrested for pushing people around at a Pride Parade? How does the convention even know this? Pretty sure that unless your church is Westboro Baptist, you’re not going to be judged at the door for the company you keep.
Behaviour. Period.
The intent of the CofC is so that, say, James Frenkel, whose actions in harassing women were sufficient to get him fired from a job in the field, cannot try and go to this convention with the excuse “But this isn’t one of the ones where I have been banned for backing women into corners.” It’s so someone known to have harassed a prior SFWA president and others on a regular basis cannot pretend his reputation cannot possibly “count” in this space. It’s NOT there to vet every single joe schmoe who signs up. Concoms talk to other concoms and know a few names via SF-specific discussion forums, and other would-be members sometimes check the list of con memberships where those are public. They don’t Google your church affiliation. or demand you unlock your phone. They don’t CARE about anything except whether you are safe for other congoers to be around.
As a swede, I’m happy to ban people who participate in churches that work actively to discriminate against homosexuals. Membership is bad enough for me, especially in a country like US where they create new christian denominations as if they were metal fans naming yet another sound. Should be at least some decent churches available.
Sorry to say, CONvergence does not seem to have that policy.
@bill
How would the con com even know what church you’re a member of and what precisely that church believes, unless you keep bringing it up at the con and other cons?
And – as Lenora Rose said – if you’re the sort who keeps bringing up your religion and that you disapprove of the lives of others around you based on your religion, then it’s no surprise if many people think you’re a jerk.
When Trump or Vox Day or Pat Robertson or JDA or some other bigot holds themselves out as the ne plus ultra of Christianity, there is nothing I need to say when people express themselves about the example they set.
On the other hand, I could do without the gratuitous insults that accrue about Christianity itself (“as if they were metal fans naming another sound”) — the religion I follow — in comments here.
@Lenora
You describe a number of actions that go well beyond what I was positing, and that I think are extraordinarily rude at a minimum. “Live and let live,” as you put it, is a good rule for all.
But definitions of “behavior” are fluid. We live in a world where declining to participate in a gay wedding can be financially ruinous for a baker (is actively declining to do something “behavior”?), where saying that homosexuality is a sin can get you kicked out of college.
Fandom strikes me as more gay-friendly than American society at large, and less religious (and, this being America, “religious” = “mostly varieties of Christianity”). And some folks are more aggressive about both of those positions than others. You said “Nobody minds if you’re a Christian”, but you know as well as I do that there is such a thing as anti-Christian bigotry. A small example, and near irrelevant in the grand scheme of things: Hampus writes “christian” with a lower-case “c”. He writes other proper nouns with upper-case letters, so this comes across as a specific choice, and a way to denigrate Christianity (or maybe religion in general — I haven’t gone back and checked how he writes Muslim, Buddhist, etc.)
All this taken together suggests the possibility that people who are members of groups that are anti-gay, as many mainstream American Protestant churches are taken to be, can be called out for such membership. I simply wonder if the CONvergence people have considered this, and what they would do if it came up.
@Hampus
So membership in particular churches is sufficient to exclude? Catholicism worked against gay marriage — would you exclude practicing Catholics?
@Cora
Well, that’s the question, isn’t it? They say that behavior outside of the convention is grounds for exclusion, but they don’t say how they will gather that information. As OGH says, “It will be interesting to learn how CONvergence works out all the issues involved.”
bill: We live in a world where declining to participate in a gay wedding can be financially ruinous for a baker
Getting an invitation to a wedding and deciding not to go is “declining to participate”.
A business refusing to sell their goods to a customer on the basis of their sexual orientation is discrimination and bigotry. It’s funny how people think they should be immune to public reactions to their acts of discrimination and bigotry.
But hey, nice attempt to palm that card. 🙄
@bill
I’m not religious myself, but I have no problem with people who are and dislike the “noisy” atheists who can’t stop talking about the religion they suppoedly don’t believe in. However, I do have a problem when religious people try to force their beliefs on everybody else. As long as you don’t do that and don’t behave obnoxiously in general, I don’t think you’ll have a problem.
I don’t know how CONvergence plans to implement this, but I suspect it involved comparing notes with other conventions regarding people who are harrassers or otherwise highly problematic. I really can’t see them combing your social media and checking which church you attend and how that particular denomination (and there are a lot of denominations in the US) feels e.g. about LGBT rights, if only because that would involve a huge amount of time. In short, as long as you’re not a jerk, I don’t think you’ll have any problems.
As for being offended that Hampus chose not to capitalise Christian, I’m pretty sure that no offense was meant. Most likely, religions are not capitalised in Swedish. At any rate, they are not capitalised in German, when used as an adjective. They are capitalised when used as a noun, simply because all nouns are. I also don’t always remember to capitalise religions in English, because I find it a bit weird that English, which capitalises very few words, chooses to capitalise religions of all things. I don’t mean any offense, I simply go by the principle of treating words relating to religions like other words of the same class.
At the risk of stating the painfully obvious:
This is a code of actions and behavior.
This is not a code of beliefs.
As is clearly stated in CVG’s emailing.
I’m also kinda curious as to what kind of behavior constitutes being “aggressively gay-friendly.”
@bill — if you want sympathy for feeling excluded as a Christian, try not saying that by “less religious” you mostly mean “less Christian.” Treating those as equivalent makes me wonder what else you’re overlooking, or defining away as irrelevant.
I just took a look at the CONvergence website. The first guest listed on the front page is Guy Consolomagno. That’s Brother Guy, director of the Vatican Observatory. What were you saying about them not welcoming Christians?
Any time you start reading deeper meaning into tiny differences in communication you’re going to get false positives. Not everyone ascribes the same meaning to things, and even if they did typos are a thing.
I am really unhappy about how certain christians like to call anti-bigotry anti-christian, because by doing so they’re trying to claim that bigotry is inherent to and required by a religion, and that their interpretation is more christian than those who do not share it. No. They don’t get to define what it is to be christian for the rest of us.
You can believe whatever you’d like in the privacy of your own head, but the moment your actions unfairly discriminate, you have crossed the line. If the worst consequence you face — and it’s entirely unclear that this would even happen, so this mostly seems like an exercise in sowing FUD — is not being able to attend a convention… Well. world’s tiniest violin
Not super keen on the conflation of “religious” and “christian” either.
Also not super keen on how far this thread has been derailed from talking about harassment, although I realise I’m contributing to such.
Meredith: Also not super keen on how far this thread has been derailed from talking about harassment, although I realise I’m contributing to such.
And of course that was exactly what the commenter intended, by deliberately conflating what people believe with what they actually do, in terms of things which generate negative consequences. 🙄
@Meredith
If anything, I’d say that bigotry is antithetical to Christianity (and most other religions, for that matter), at least the Christianity I am familiar with. If your (general you) definition of Christianity involves discriminating against people you don’t like for whatever reason, it’s not a version of Christianity I want anything to do with.
I have a female friend who is a Christian chaplan. She got married to another woman last year.
People who insist that if one is Christian one must by definition be homophobic must believe that Episcopalians, Presbyterians, UCCs, Evangelical Lutherans, and no doubt other Christian denominations are not REAL Christians. <eyeroll>
Cassy B, yup. I am a Christian. I was raised Methodist, attended a Baptist church for a while, and now attend an Episcopal (Anglican) church. Both that Baptist church and this Episcopal church were and are gay-friendly, and both have had LGBTQIA ministers from time to time. The Baptist church, located in Greenwich Village in Manhattan, has marched in the NYC Gay Pride March annually since before I started attending it in the early Eighties. I still remember the filk on “Easter Parade” which a musical member wrote called “Gay Pride Parade”. We used to sing that and “We shall Overcome” and a number of other appropriate songs when passing St. Peter’s, which was where the protestors hung out back then. Maybe still do. I’ve gotten old and haven’t marched in years. It was awfully fun, though. It was a mixed group, conceptually the entire congregation, including those who did not identify as LGBTQIA. My dad and stepmom used to wear their clerical collars for the occasion.
My Episcopal Diocese also sends a group, and there are NYC Episcopal churches which march.
My mother was a minister, too, and was pastor of a Reconciling Congregation at the end of her church career (the United Methodist gay-friendly church organization). As she would say, Open the Doors.
It wasn’t meant as an insult. I am a metal fan myself and do note the enormous amount of genres available that are extremely close to each other (power metal, speed metal, new wave of brittish heavy metal, Doom metal, death metal, Thrash metal…). Where people find the genre they want on a very nuanced level.
American christianity is much more diverse than swedish christianity where we have a state church and everything else is seen as a bit suspect. That is what I meant to say.
However, I do apologize for making you feel as if I made light of your own beliefs. That was not my intention.
If the Catholic church they are members of is working actively to discriminate against homosexuals, then I am absolutely happy if members are excluded from events. If the church has nominal opinions, but do not preach the right to discriminate others or work for the discrimination of others, then I do bot see any reasons to exclude members. And of course, I would always make exceptions for people who said “yes, my church says, but I…“.
I do not see any big difference in being part of The Society For Discrimination or being part of The Religion of Discrimination. I do not see any big difference in saying that homosexuals shouldn’t be allowed to marry or and to say that black and white people shouldn’t be allowed to marry.
“Live and Let Live”, as you said. Not “Live and Let Discriminate”.
We write christianity with small letters in Sweden, just as we do with islam or judaism. To be honest, I have no idea if I have a pattern of writing here. I know there are several words that are capitalized in US that aren’t in Sweden and sometimes I try to correct them, sometimes not. As an example, I have tried to start saying Monday with a capital letter.
It might be that I have a pattern in english where I do not use the capital letter for Christianity as often as in Judaism or Islam. I haven’t really thought about it, but if so, I should correct it. But as I do not really differ between philosophies and religions, that will most likely mean I will use small lettters for all.
That is not to denigrate. That is to not show extra respect for some beliefs that is not shown to others.
One thing I can acknowledge. Sweden is off the scale with regards to being secular compared to other countries in the world. Take a look at the linked graph and compare Sweden (top right) with US (in english speaking bubble). This does absolutely lead to cultural clashes. Faith is a private thing in Sweden and it is very seldom brought up outside of believers own community.
I remember your type of arguments from 15 years ago, a priest was preaching against homosexuality, and was first sentenced to prison and later freed because the European Convention on religious freedom overruled Swedish law. But the condemnations against him were universal. There was absolutely no acceptance whatsoever for that kind of speech.
That debate is long since past in Sweden. The first discrimination laws against homosexuals came in -83 (even if they continued to be expanded until 2003 and transpersons much later) and has full support from society as a whole.
Arguing for allowing discrimination against homosexuals in Sweden would not only stop you from entering a convention, you would absolutely risk your job too, at least if it was in any public role.
I dislike organized atheism quite a bit more than I dislike organized religions. There is an unbearable smugness about some of it. And in a country such as Sweden, I’d say that it is as much the religious people that feel atheism and secularism that is enforced upon them.
Which is why we mostly prefer to keep beliefs private. Time to link to this one again.
Hmm, my longer comment was caught in the spam filter.
@Mike Glyer: I’ve tried to refrain from expressing my criticisms, even though I was taught to do that sort of thing. It can be easy to get riled up online, though.
@Hampus Eckerman: But I think it’s a good idea for everyone to have their beliefs challenged on occasion–people need a “seeking spirit”.
As an atheist, I do not. 😉
Hampus Eckerman: Good point. I’ve heard that a young man who wishes to remain a sound atheist cannot be too careful of his reading.
Ah — I realize I didn’t understand the reference properly to begin with. Now that I understand it, I realize it wasn’t insulting. Thanks for the explanation.
Ok, looked up the grammar rules on what letters should be capitalized, but they seem a bit weird. A Catholic church, but a catholic gesture? It feels really weird to use capital letters in this way, so I guess my usage will be a bit random for a while.
A company that won’t sell a product to customers based on their sexual orientation is no better than one that refuses customers based on race or religion.
I’m old enough to remember when people in my home state of Texas opposed interracial marriage on religious grounds, claiming it was sinful race-mixing. To me, it’s the same situation to oppose an interracial couple as a gay couple. If you have a business that serves the public in America you shouldn’t be able to discriminate against a race, religion, ethnicity or sexual orientation.
The way the Christian right is trying to enshrine discrimination by claiming it is religious freedom is appalling.
@Cassy B.:
I’d guess such people believe exactly that.
@bill–” I simply wonder if the CONvergence people have considered this, and what they would do if it came up.”
“I simply wonder how much more I’m going to have to stretch my premise until I get an answer I can be Offended by and then smugly consider myself the winner in this conversation that everyone else is rolling their eyes over.”
There, fixed that for you.
“especially in a country like US where they create new christian denominations as if they were metal fans naming yet another sound. ”
This made me laugh–I’ve just been reading Florence King’s book “WASP, where is thy sting?”. One of her lines about Protestants was “Schism is our specialty. There are Protestants and there are Protestants and never the twain shall meet.”
Considering the fact that in my rather small home-town in Iowa, where there was once only one Baptist church (First Baptist, of course), there are now at least three separate ones and a couple of “Free Evangelical” ones that weren’t there when I was a kid, I’d say that was a pretty good description.
as an aside, it wasn’t until I was looking this up that I realized that so many of the churches of my childhood had the word “First” in their names. First Baptist; First Christian; First Lutheran; First Methodist; First Congregational; First Church of the Nazarene.
Only St. John’s Episcopal and Our Lady Of The Holy Rosary differed.
I was walking across a bridge one day, and I saw a man standing on
the edge, about to jump off. So I ran over and said “Stop! don’t do it!”
“Why shouldn’t I?” he said.
I said, “Well, there’s so much to live for!”
He said, “Like what?”
I said, “Well…are you religious or atheist?”
He said, “Religious.”
I said, “Me too!
Are you christian or Buddhist?”
He said,”Christian.”
I said, “Me too! Are you catholic or protestant?”
He said, “Protestant.”
I said, “Me too! Are you episcopalian or baptist?”
He said, “Baptist!”
I said,”Wow! Me too! Are you baptist church of god or
baptist church of the lord?”
He said, “Baptist church of god!”
I said, “Me too! Are you original baptist church of god, or are you
reformed baptist church of god?”
He said,”Reformed Baptist church of god!”
I said, “Me too! Are you reformed baptist church of god, reformation
of 1879, or reformed baptist church of god, reformation of 1915?”
He said, “Reformed baptist church of god, reformation of 1915!”
I said, “Die, heretic scum”, and pushed him off.
🙂
@Harold Osler
I remember my mother, after ten or twelve years in west Texas, describing what happens as “they get into an argument about how to interpret a verse (because they believe in inerrancy and literal interpretations), and they split into two churches. After a few of those, you may still have one big church, but there’s going to be a dozen or so that are small”. That applies to all the conservative Protestant sects; the mainline ones, which aren’t usually believers in inerrancy, don’t do this so much.
It’s kind of ironic to have believers in Biblical inerrancy splitting up over interpretation. It’s almost as if scripture does require interpretation after all, no matter how fundamentalist you think you are.
But I expect I am missing something. I am, after all, an Episcopalian.
Meh. I wasn’t trying to make a point about reading. It was only a silly joke based on atheists not believing in spirits. I have read my share of religious scriptures, including the Bible and the Quran.
@Hampus Eckerman: I didn’t realize it was a joke. The word “spirit” was used only because English is defective. I happen to not believe in distinct disembodied spirits either.
@Jeff Jones: I most certainly believe in spirits. I have a cabinet full of them, mainly single malt.
@LenoreJones–“Depending upon which church door you open, you will find the best people, the good people or the ones Episcopalians call ‘those’ people.”
Florence King
(I do miss being able to italicize words)
“I was raised Methodist. We still believe in God-we just don’t make a big deal out of it”.
Sabrina Matthews
@Harold Osler
(I do miss being able to italicize words)
You can still use italics. You just have to hand-type the html.
@Patrick Morris Miller: Well I can’t drink those anymore, so it’s best not to believe. 🙂
@Hampus Eckerman: You will almost certainly never need to use the word “catholic” in the lower-case sense. I’m not sure I have used it in my life. Maybe in a quotation.
That’s probably true. Idioms like “for those with catholic tastes” are aging out of the language. I can imagine still using lower-case catholic, but probably in the service of achieving a deliberately affected phrasing for satirical or humorous purposes.
It’s the form used in the Apostles’ Creed: the “holy catholic Church”, meaning universal.