The Pride Celebration Act has been vetoed ― What now?

I am going to often address staff here as an indeterminate group. However, given that the veto is an "Owner Veto" i.e. Tech and End, and with End being out of power for the time being, it is safe to say Tech issued this veto by himself.

Background

The long-awaited Pride Celebration Act, which was proposed in anticipation of June and in hopes of official law-binding DC pride celebrations, finally passed the House and Senate last Sunday, with only Representative Musclebound (PCP) issuing a Nay and Senator Incarnation__ (LAB) abstaining from the vote.

With our new Multiman155 administration in place, the President signed the law today, seemingly making it a done deal. What came as a shock to most, though, is that, barely 9 hours after the signage, staff issued an official unilateral veto, citing Rule 1 "Discussions about controversial topics such as real world politics and world religion are not permitted in public channels.", blocking the law from coming into effect and ending any political discussion around it, seemingly setting the precedent that "No, social issues cannot be made into law.".

Public Reaction

Now, as many might expect, people were angry at this situation, including me, with some even firing up the whole "Staff Overreach" topic, since to be fair this is a good example to point to. It neither looks good on staff's side nor does it spark confidence for the future, given how any social law with controversial real world counterparts will probably now not even get attention with the looming staff veto hanging over it. It wouldn’t be hard to consider this a very visible infringement on the political sphere on DemocracyCraft.

When I first wanted to write a post about this, I wanted it to be like a hit-piece, rallying support for our community and pushing back against what I initially saw as staff blocking pro-LGBTQ+ legislation. I wanted to initiate pushback, since we at the Redmont Trans+ Network were founded specifically to counter bigotry and support our community on the server. The general strike of June 7th was a protest against transphobia and we wanted to keep that spirit going to hold the government and staff accountable for their treatment of our community.

Now, I am not so sure. To explain why, I want to go through what staff had to say about this whole ordeal and their reasoning behind this decision.

The reason & What it means for us

Now there are two main points that I want to focus on.

First, that the staff team isn’t doing this out of malice, homophobia or transphobia, but strict adherence to their rules and the conviction that passing the Pride Celebration Act would mix real life controversial issues and the internal DemocracyCraft politics we’re all engaging with. I truly believe that Tech in this case is not being a bigot, since he was very apologetic talking about this in the politics channel on the Discord and was trying to convince others of the fact that he also doesn't want identities to be politicised, but simply views this as protection from bigotry that the Pride Celebration Act would in his view inevitably invite. However, you can’t deny that this decision is still going to affect the community and will create a precedent that will paint the topic of pride as a political taboo. You can engage with pride and celebrate it, but not put it into an official law nor put it into political context, because that’s against the rules.

Furthermore, staff seems convinced that their own enforcement of the rules, which by the way already forbids any form of homophobia and transphobia, will suffice to keep the server civil and safe for our community. I do want to give them the benefit of the doubt here, since I know a lot of staff and I trust that their judgement will be fair and just. However, this is a very informal one-sided power, not at all like our well-known judiciary enforcement of the laws on the server, where even if a judge doesn’t agree with the rules they will be forced to enforce them. We know that staff internally acts the same way, but we have seen before that staff isn’t easily accountable for their behaviour.

The question then that arises for me is how far we can trust that staff is going to be fair towards the players and even more so our community on DemocracyCraft? Especially considering the fact they want to retain the entire power to decide over social issues. That's beyond the scope of this article though and so I leave that answer up to the person reading this.

Secondly, I want to highlight what for me caused the biggest shift in my thinking: “We would apply this veto identically to any Bill seeking to legislate a real-world social, political, or religious cause, whatever its stance.”. What does this realistically mean for the political sphere on DemocracyCraft, including any real-world issues we might actually want to solve within our space? The concepts of gender expression and gender markers still exist here, people will and have changed gender while being on the server, and the bigotry on the server is real and tangible. With staff enforcing this rule in this specific way, all these issues are up to staff to decide and regulate, which puts a large amount of power in their hands they need to wield cautiously. We’ve seen how gender and name changes can cause issues and are not to be ignored as a potential issue.

Realistically, I would argue that this style of rule enforcement means that DemocracyCraft will always have to shadow our real-life status quo to some degree, since staff is made up of people from real-world countries with real-world opinions and issues. If staff agrees or doesn’t agree with something, or simply wants to retain the power over certain topics, then, well, that’s what‘s going to be defining the political playing field. Whether staff likes to acknowledge this or not, they are a political force and by no means a small one. They control the meta-politics, if you want to call it that, of our server for which they have to be held accountable.

What now?

Well, what should we take away from this then? We’re clearly on strange territory here and it’s hard to compare this situation to anything else. We are bound by the rules of DemocracyCraft as much as we are bound to the state and its constitution and laws.

I’d say if staff wants to regulate these matters on a meta-level and retain the power to regulate social issues then let’s have it! Let’s always hold them accountable for their actions and never let our scrutiny slip away, to make them be open about their actions and whatever decisions they reach. Staff isn’t a monolith and the people in it as well as its policies will inevitably be subject to change. Let’s make sure it’s going to be a good one.

Advocacy in the face of a one-sided decision making process might seem hopeless or without much effect, especially when it's hard to feel like we have a say in how the server is being run, but we’ve shown before that we can push DemocracyCraft to be better and we should continue to do so.

The Pride Celebration Act might be dead in the water, never to be revived, but we can still push for a safe community on the server, push the current administration to never stop supporting us and make everyone remember who holds the actual power on the server!

Celebrate our differences, be loud and proud, and never forget our community! Never look away, and make sure the people in power do what's right. The team at the Redmont Trans+ Network and I will always stand behind every single person of our movement and do our best to represent the trans community and its allies on the server.

Happy pride month, everyone.

FloofyLunafox,

opinion piece for the Redmont Trans+ Network

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