by John Traveler

Created on: June 29, 2009   Last Updated: June 30, 2009

If you want the chance to give voice to your ideological persuasions, esoteric notions, your personal opinions and beliefs, Helium.com is the ultimate forum to do it in. But, if you think you will be heard by bashing some other writer in the rating system, you are sadly mistaken.

When this word-smith first joined the family of Helium writers several years ago, it was a diverse institution of multicultural, multinational, ideological diversity, embracing just about every perspective on any given subject you want to talk about. Take religion for instance; there used to be multitudes of Buddhists, Muslims, Jews, and even a few atheists who could be counted on at Helium to provide dissenting views, making Helium interesting and representative of a wider spectrum of thoughts and perspectives.

Sure, some of them are still around, but those who remain don't bother to share their religious perspectives any more because they are all too well aware their articles will tank as more radical Christian bigots rate them, not based on any objective analysis of the writers ability to eloquently convey a thought, but totally subjectively on the basis that the rater does not agree with the writers convictions.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not picking on Christians here, as you can be assured that a Helium site in Israel, where Judaism is the predominant view, would not treat Christian perspectives (which are considered heretical in Jewish orthodoxy) with any more respective deference. We could probably come to the same conclusion with respect to countries where Islam is the predominant belief.

It is important here too, to establish that the ideological rating bashing trend at Helium is not confined to topics of esoteric belief. If your views are anything to the left of conservative in your politics and you're considering participation in a Helium writing contest on political issues, don't bother to waste your time. But that's not the extent of it either. Even in a topical area such as science you will find people who have some weird notion of the universe and feel the need to trash more realistic articles substantively questioning the basis of their absurd conceptions, and which they can't bring them selves to agree with when rating.

My fellow Heliumite's, this is America, where the right of freedom of expression and belief in what ever establishment of religion or ideological posture you choose is supreme. If you don't agree with or like what you read in an article you are rating,

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