As the title says, I did not want to have to write this post. I wanted to be able to focus on my participation in a welcoming and inclusive community for everyone, regardless of their background or beliefs. However, recent events have made it clear that there are some people who are trying to spread hate and division.
Let me say what precipitated this post. As the creator of the 11ty Bundle website, I collect blog posts and websites, among other things to share with the 11ty community.
Over the weekend, I added the site that I failed to sufficiently scrutinize. One of the members of our community alerted me to some of the content on the site, which included hateful and discriminatory language. I was saddened to see this. I had already promoted the site via Mastodon and Bluesky and added it the Showcase page of the 11ty Bundle site. I immediately removed the site from the Showcase page and deleted my posts about it on Mastodon and Bluesky.
At first, I thought about notifying the site owner and I struggled with the decision. I ultimately decided that that was the right course of action. I first attempted to contact them via DM on Bluesky, but they were not DM'able. I then sent them the following email (name/site not included):
I wanted to let you know that I have removed your site from the 11ty Bundle as well as the Bluesky and Mastodon posts promoting it. I had not been aware of what I consider to be your hateful views of large groups of people in our world. I appreciate the strength of your Christian beliefs, yet some of what you express on your website is in direct opposition to my own beliefs. And since my goal is to cater to a generous and inclusive community that today exists around the 11ty project, I felt it best to simply remove access to your content through a site that I try to carefully curate.
You are absolutely entitled to hold the beliefs that you do, and many others do as well, but I am also entitled to avoid promoting those in any way.
I hope you understand.
With love, -Bob Monsour
Stuff like this matters to me. And please know that I will be more vigilant in the future about the content that I promote. I want to be a part of a community that is welcoming and inclusive to everyone, and I will do my best to prevent hate from entering our community.
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