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Your June 10 pastebin states "All game related tags are available to its members. If people wish to use non-game related tags, and utilize Twitch for more purposes than game matters only then there are several other retro related teams which we could recommend."

This on its own, to you, may seem inoffensive, but everyone else wants an answer on -why- this is a rule.

The letter of the law serves no purpose without the spirit of the law, and the spirit of the law is not clear to anyone except perhaps yourself. The letter of the law, on its own, is clear-cut targeting of one member for using a Twitch feature to identify himself as a visible minority.

So, in the hopes that things aren't as they seem, we investigate the reasoning for this rule:

You in fact stated your reasoning quite clearly in your May 30 pastebin: "I am sure you have great intentions for wanting to try and make everyone comfortable but I can assure you there are people on the other side who feel uncomfortable when they see this tag and it can turn people off from your stream."

So, it is quite clear from this, in addition to your explanation of the word "worldview" on lines 111-120, the purpose of this rule is to prevent the discomfort of people who don't believe LGBT people should exist. This is a dubious goal to begin with, but for the sake of argument, that goal cannot end with a tag rule.

However, you also state "This does not mean that no discussions could ever occur in relation to non-gaming subjects, but it does mean that we would avoid topics that are not aimed at the broadest audience possible, and there are conversational guidelines in place to help guide us in this regard." So not only is it clear that this rule does not, in fact, exist entirely within the bounds of "check the box or don't", but it extends to the streamer's content as well. As it should, because if your goal is to protect would-be viewers who hate gay people while unknowingly watching a gay streamer, then that necessitates policing the content that appears in the form of casual conversation, both on behalf of the streamer and of the chat.

This is further evidenced by the fact that there are clear exceptions to the non-gaming policy, but the only exceptions I can see in your May 30 pastebin are "Liquids, Foods, and smoking are also permitted on stream with reasonable consumption." Beyond that, the only specific content rule seems to lie on line 109, which is a potpourri of very, very vague and broad discussion classifications.

This opens up a gaping loophole the size of Rhode Island: What do you do for grey conversational areas that imply the same thing as the LGBTQIA tag, but do not fall under the realm of political debate or activism?

What happens when I, a woman, am streaming Metroid speedruns, and another woman's voice in the background suddenly interjects with "babe, dinner's ready!" Would this be grounds to eject me from the team, as an anti-LGBTQIA viewer who made it past the tag stage has suddenly had their worldview offended by the fact that the streamer is not straight? If yes, would I be ejected for the exact same scenario, were I a man and therefore straight?

What happens when a trans woman streams without a camera, and a chatter mistakenly refers to her as "he", and the streamer corrects that chatter by stating that she goes by "she"? Is she ejected from the team for asserting her worldview that it's okay to be trans?

What if, in the previous scenario, it was another chatter issuing a correction on behalf of the streamer? Is the streamer obligated to ban the corrective chatter to comply with the "no gender politics" rule?

There are countless scenarios that are not covered by the contents of your pastebin, but furthermore, even if you could make an executive decision on any of these, how do you police that content without constant monitoring of every team member's stream, to ensure that conversational content stays "all gaming", and there are no traces of innocuous lifestyles that might accidentally offend somebody who hasn't received a firmware upgrade on their "worldview" in about 60 years?

The LGBTQIA tag rule extends into a general content rule that is either poorly defined, poorly thought out, realistically unenforceable, or all of the above. Further, on line 146, you repeatedly call upon "PG teams" (let's be real here, we all know that this is referring to Speedrunners Keeping It Real PG), when a week prior, the creator of said team has stated that his philosophy on team membership and content guidelines is a far cry from your own and should not be used to demonstrate your point: https://twitter.com/dwdBabby/status/1132130858767269889?s=19

"When I evaluated Lylovir's stream I do not recall recognizing any non-gaming related elements even if they happened to have been there at the time." Honestly, the discussion should have simply ended here, and Lylovir should have never been given the boot.

Your June 10 pastebin states "Anyone from any walk of life are free to share our gaming passions as our sole common interest", which implies a well-intended open invitation. The "sole common interest" line, paired with tag policing, cannot reasonably be taken as anything other than an attempt at team cohesion. And cohesion is fine as a goal.

But team cohesion cannot exist if a member like Messi is allowed to make bigoted statements with no consequence. The above stated open invitation is null and void to members of the minority that that member has targeted.

Your stated mission in your pastebin, "creating a culture where anyone and everyone can connect concerning games regardless of who they are", is well-intended, but you cannot fairly expect a LGBT person to sacrifice their dignity in order to "co-exist" with someone who would prefer them to not exist.

For this reason, "neutrality" is, in fact, taking a side, when it is your decision as to who does and goes not get to participate on your team. Those two people can never, because of the aggressive belief of the transphobic person, have an equal relationship with each other, or comparable relationships to yourself, as far as power dynamics within the team are concerned, and it is the LGBT person who stands to lose the most.

This goes beyond the bubble realm of philosophical pontificating, this is real life for several people, one of whom you directly hurt with your choices for committing the crime of being a minority on either the basis of gender (an internal identity, which you cannot intellectually honestly compare to pedophiles, murderers, and incestuous groomers, as you callously did on line 154 of your May 30 pastebin) or sexual orientation (assuming you're arguing in good faith, you should understand why my previous parenthetical also applies here).

Someone on your team whose worldview directly opposes the existence of another prospective member of your team's right to exist is the sole person responsible for "extremely sensitive issues like this" that "ruin friendships and cause great harm and division on Twitch", and that is who your issue should be with, not a person self-identifying with a Twitch tag.

If you can police somebody's use of tags on twitch to placate the worldviews of would-be viewers, you can police somebody's conduct within your own team, and understand that stating "neutrality" ad nauseam is not in any way a dis-association with that conduct in the eyes of the public.

This is why a real apology and overhaul of the team rules is being demanded by the public, this constant dragging is only making it clearer and clearer to these poor LGBT people that there are just another few names to add to the long, long list of names they cannot trust.

I highly appreciate your donation to the Trevor Foundation, but allyship does not end there -- I strongly, strongly implore you to consider my words here, which are just echoes of the words of several others before me who have been unceremoniously blocked.