Descent

It was a multi player net work game we used to play at work over lunch or occasionally on weekends.

Agreed. It’s a good show. My wife re-watches it every summer. I enjoy watching it with her too.

the bakery wouldn’t make a pride specific cake

LOL in other words they would not serve them.

Hate the belief not the believer.

:-)

work in a context where the person exercising their speech feels some necessity to use it responsibly

Nice phrasing

However there are people with legitimate ( beliefs and ideas honestly held that they wish to discuss ) views that I worry are going to be silenced and further marginalized.

Sounds kind and charitable. It is not clear to me how universal this is given your opening paragraphs. I would agree that is they way it should be but I don’t think that reflects how it is. We need to react based on the actual reality we live in.

However if these are honestly held beliefs that they are willing to engage in civil discourse around I don’t think it’s right to actually block them.

But what if there is a significant number of people who are just awful humans, or don’t have a thought for learning, or are not being open or honest etc.

I support the idea of engagement and discussion but let’s be honest there are people who aren’t interested in that. There are people who are racist. There are people who really do think you and I are going to hell and they are happy to know that. Sorry there is a reason I don’t associate with people like that in real life and I don’t want to on line either.

It is not my mission to discuss this kind of thing with all those people. Trolls and awful humans sometimes do need to be ignored. Otherwise we cannot have interesting or productive conversations with anyone.

I say, let those that want to engage and learn find a server or community with standards that we can tolerate. Any community that doesn’t have standards to keep reasonable order we should block.