I'm basically a live & let live sort so generally protest like mad restrictive rules. However....

Religion and politics are subjects that a whole lot of people get passionate about. Two or three sentences beyond that, and stuff often begins to get personal ... and then feelings get hurt.

Most of us are here trying to deal with our mental health problems, and it's hard enough to keep opinions from getting in the way of discussions as it is. Eliminating these two "hot-button-issues" has been done in public forums long before Political Correctness or computers. It just saves a lot of hurt feelings and unresolved anger.

The only threads I've ever seen disappear are those that are moved to somewhere someone considers more appropriate or those whose creators have asked for it to be removed. And I guess if enough people find a forum no longer useful for whatever reason, it would vanish pretty much like old threads do when we quit posting to them. I don't go much to the spirituality forum here; for my tastes, there are better ones elsewhere on the Internet--so I take my business there.