The point was what is offensive (or indeed abusive) varies massively between people, as can what they can handle when it comes to questioning and comments. This can also get fine grain as you like as well -- if we are to focus on this transexual lark for some reason (we have had any number of other pain points for people over the years ranging from various religions though mostly the hundred thousand US takes on Christianity and Islam of various flavours including inter flavour fun and games, the nature of autism, sex before marriage, discussion of condoms was an amusing one once, the abortion threads were fun, we have somehow managed to dodge the circumcision discussion in its fullest but it has cropped up...) then would be allowed to have the sports debate, age debate upon when "diagnosis" (which itself is something of a contentious term) and resulting use of hormones or surgery, troubles with false diagnostics, the ever fun push for surgery at least some medics go in for or is it all to be verboten (or, worse, only unmitigated praise and support to be shown)?
Would banning things and rendering it a place where nobody might ever be offended a) improve things and b) possibly help expose people to other schools of thought (sunlight, wonderful disinfectant and all that?
Over the years I have seen several go from ew fags, ew arabs, ew ... to realising that the people they have spent the last however many years hacking consoles/games with, making cheats, playing games with, debating about the merits of old and upcoming games, playing games with after their mate (possibly a mutual one on the forums) lost a game of beat the bus/argument with physics. Is "ew t********" going to be different there? Do I want to prevent that from happening here? Shame to prevent that if you ask me.
Either way, they already matter much more in a gaming forum than a politics section.
Is this a gaming forum or a forum with gaming as one of the main focuses? We have had political, ethical and philosophical type discussions for as long as I have been here and as best I can tell pretty much since the start as well.