Please allow me to take your points one by one.

 An open letter to the furry community, if there is such a thing.
 I want to take a moment to address the problems we've put up with
 from the idiots and morons out there. Granting for a moment that
 those two extremely descriptive terms could cover 15/16th of
 humanity, please allow me to sharpen both the focus of my discontent
 and my claws on some of tonight's victims.

 First of all, some perspective. I have been a Furry longer than 85%
 of you have lived. Most of you out there think that life and modern
 civilization began sometime in the 80s. You can't possibly hope to
 remember anything that came before that, except to hear your older
 and wiser parents, brothers, sisters, and siblings talk about what
 went on in the "old days" of the 1960s. I have been a furry since
 1975. I speak to you now as a survivor, and one whose longevity has
 given, as longevity usually does, the double-edged ability to both
 look back, and to see forward.

 This happens because you've climbed a hill. For any of you who've
 been fortunate enough to live in any of the great cities, such as
 Rome, or San Francisco,(I have lived in both.) you know the
 advantages and disadvantages that climbing up a hill can grant you.

I've lived in San Francisco, and in Los Angeles as well.  I know two things about hills: the view is great, but the climb is a bitch.

 There's been another wave of furry bashing floating around both on
 the net, and in RL, as we are so fond of saying. We've had an
 entirely new wave of half-wits, morons, idiots, politicians, used
 car dealers, and phone sanitizers feeling free to take potshots at
 us, just because the technology and the opportunity exists to do so.
 It doesn't take a second doctorate in astrophysics to see clearly
 what happens when these peawits get bored, get tired of straight
 porn, or just want to jump on the bandwagon and be popular again for
 a minute or two.

All right. . .

 Since Furry Bashers are generally people of obviously low IQ, and
 even lower creativity quotient, and a rock-bottom self-esteem, it's
 both easy and appealing to add their presence to that ever-growing
 bandwagon that sees all the problems in the world originating with
 Furries.

False.  Furry bashers do not have low IQs or low creativity quotient, nor do they have low self-esteem.  Some do, but many are intelligent, articulate, creative people who simply have a searing hatred of the fandom.  Nor do they attribute all problems in the world to furries, except in jest.  What they attribute to furries is what is sadly, a large aspect of furry behavior, which I'll get to later.

 These people don't worry me. They are as common as dirt, and as
 worthless as played out soil. You could throw away 16 tons of them,
 mix their worthless, colorless, mundane lives with water, dirt, and
 straw, to make mud bricks, and use the bricks to build something
 worthwhile. That would be about the only way that any of these
 cheap, creepy, Furry bashers could amount to anything.

*gets a bottle of antacids* Oy vey.

Worthless, colorless, mundane lives?  Where do you get this information from?  Simply because someone doesn't like anthropomorphic animals and despises people who take that sort of thing too seriously does not make them worthless, colorless, or mundane.  Some enjoy sports and creative pursuits.  Others enjoy macrame, knitting, or the works of Terry Pratchett.  This assertion fails.

 What worries me, and drives me to fits of anger bordering on despair
 is that Furries are doing nothing about it. One of the things that
 continues to make us an easy target for the rest of the zombies that
 fill the malls these days is that we don't fight back.

Wrong.

What makes furries easy targets is that they fight back so ineffectually.

I present to you the example of the Star Trek fandom.  Star Trek is an incredibly geeky fandom, with aspects of it that boggle the mind.  It's been skewered by everything from the Simpsons to William Shatner himself.  But the trekkers don't respond by fighting back as you claim.  They respond with the most effective weapons in these cases:

1. A sense of balance.
2. A sense of humor.
3. A sense of pride.

By a sense of balance, I mean that most, aside from the lunatic fringe, understand that Star Trek is, in the end, a hobby, not a lifestyle.  By a sense of humor, I mean that they are just as willing as their detractors to laugh at the stereotypes.  And by a sense of pride, I mean that they understand that simply because someone does not like the same hobbies they do, it does not make them bad or worthless.  It means that the other simply does not like their hobbies.  They move on.

 I've never spoken at length about myself, suffice to say that I grew
 up the most dark, evil, and violent temper any sane person could
 dare to imagine. Don't worry, I changed. I grew. Being Furry changed
 me. The Skiltaire changed me. Put that in your pipe and smoke it,
 Sy. Like it or not, and sometimes I don't like it one little bit, I
 have committed the balance of my life to non-violence and the
 creative arts. As tempting as it might be, I can never suggest, nor
 would I ever suggest that any sort of violence be used against
 anyone who is a furry detractor.

That's great.  Violence is not a nice thing.  However, I take exception to your claim that you grew up as a violent, dark, emo, woe is me individual.  It hints of internet tough-guyism. But we'll ignore that for now.

 But being non-violent does not mean being bovine, nor does it mean
 being passive to the point of having your detractors
 tattoo "welcome" on your backside with hobnailed boots and then
 using you and something you believe in as a doormat.

Point taken.

 Nevertheless, this is exactly what has happened to Furries in
 general. They lay back, they hide, they change their names, even
 their spirit animals,and they just blend into the same mundane,
 colorless, worthless, world populated and generated by our
 detractors.

Ummmmmmmmm. . . okay, there is a problem here, and it comes in lines two and three, where you say that furries change "even their spirit animals."  Last I checked, it was not a necessary part of the fandom to actually have a spirit animal.  That sort of thing is more a part of totemism or therianism than the general furry fandom.  In short, you are taking a side aspect of the fandom, a fringe element if you will, and applying it to everyone.

I also take exception to your claim that the outside world is worthless, colorless, blah blah blah blah but that's another story.

 The truth is that I'm sick to death of gutless, cowardly, lay down
 Furries.

 They might think they're laying back, blending in, safe and sound.

 I say they're laying down. And they're pulling the rest of us down
 right alongside them. No people, group of people, or community with
 common interests can rise above a certain level unless there is a
 point in time when they are willing to stand up, stand out, speak
 out, and dare to begin the long hard work of making themselves
 understood in the face of disinformation, lies, hatreds, and
 everything which makes the world all of the things that we wish it
 were not.

 Wishing is part and parcel of the core of what we are, and it is the
 first stepping stone upon the path we choose to take toward whom and
 what we really wish to be.

 But the sad reality is that we have come to live in a world where
 wishes are ground into a vile sort of pixie dust, its power turned
 and darkened as a part of something that leads us along with the
 rest of humanity to greed, self-absorption, self-interest, and in
 the end of lack of a soul which gave birth to the wish in the first
 place.

 In today's world more than ever, wishes, dreams, and hopes must be
 armored, lest the barbarian hordes wipe them away, and in a sense,
 ourselves along with them. When someone strikes us, we bleed. When
 someone tickles us, we laugh. Thus, we shelter and preserve that
 shard of unique humanity within us which is Furry.

. . . excuse me, are you claiming that furries are somehow in some ways better than the mundanes whom you so despise?

Ridiculous.

One might as well claim that an X-Phile or a Trekker somehow lives a "unique and special" life because of the fandom they love.  The very notion that a specific hobby somehow makes one superior to the others around us is poppycock.  It's bullshit.  It's ridiculous.  It's the kind of elitism that results in the bashing and hatred that you so despise.

But then, your definition of furry has always been different.  Like I said before, you seem to take the fringe elements of an overarching fandom and expect everyone to stand up for it.  It's as silly as expecting an ordinary Trekker to stand up for a lunatic fringe who believes that they are the reincarnations of Spock and McCoy.  Let the lunatic fringe stand up for themselves.  Let those who just want to pursue it as a hobby live in peace.

 We Furries are in a unique position to armor ourselves and our
 wishes against those who would so ill use them. Yet, armor is only
 the first piece of genuine protection which we require.

 I no longer advocate protection alone as a way of life, nor do I
 recommend it for a community at large, nor for any group of people
 with common interests.

 What we as a group must now advocate ever more strongly and
 forcefully is a doctrine of active self-defense. When we are
 attacked with lies, we must take up the sword and buckler of truth,
 no matter how small the buckler might be, nor how dull the edge of
 the sword might seem. For too long, Furries have been silent in the
 face of lies, slanders, libels, and misinformation.

 It has been our silence and our acquiescence in the face of these
 evils that has planted them as seeds of truth in the minds of
 others. By our inaction, and lack of reaction, we have grown us up a
 garden of weeds, rather than a corner of Eden, wherein we should
 fashion for ourselves to stand.

Wrong.

It's been people like you who insist on taking this sort of thing far too seriously that has angered those around us.

The truth is, other fandoms respond to criticism differently.  When lies are spread, they respond with truth.  They let outsiders in.  They show them what they are all about.  When Dungeons and Dragons was being attacked as a game of the devil, the creators and players made a concerted effort to show the truth of roleplaying games.  Instead of attacking the attackers, they made some slight concessions: the more extreme and objectionable artworks in the books (i.e. references to devils and such) were trimmed back.  Gamers opened up their sessions to reporters, showing that there was nothing occult going on: it was simply a big game of make believe.  Today, those who attack D&D as somehow satanic or diabolical are seen as the lunatic fringe, not the gamers. 

That's not true for the fandom.  Consider, for example, the fandom's response to portrayal of furries in the media.  Consider their response to reporters attending furry conventions.  Consider their responses to their detractors.  There is hostility towards outsiders for one simple reason: they don't want the truth to get known.

The sad truth is, those lies and hatred that you claim are being spouted by outsiders are part and parcel of the fandom.  Its overemphasis on sex, its strange social dynamics, its tendency towards new-age mysticism and oddity.  But we're embarassed of that, and so we hide it from outsiders.  Instead of opening up, we close up and attack.

 Allow me to be unwaveringly clear and surgically concise. Furries
 are among the most intelligent, the most creative, and the most
 technologically savvy people on the only planet we inhabit so far. I
 am advocating by these articles, the formulation and effectuation of
 a new attitude and activism among those who call themselves Furries.

 This new paradigm involves creativity, nonviolence, and sensitivity.
 These are the greatest strengths of Furries at large. Let us use
 what we know, and craft how we apply it to defend ourselves from
 these culturally deprived attacks. At the same time, rather than
 striking back, or striking out with violence of deed or word, we
 must become masters of using the self same opportunity to reach out
 to others and to demonstrate in ourselves, and by our actions as
 well as our words, the truth of what we believe, and who we are.

 Now the first and most obvious problem with this whole new idea is
 the fact that it requires work. (Oh god, there's that word again!)

 Relax. This work will be fun, which really makes it play in the end.
 And when do we learn most?

 When some pinhead with a voice synthesizer smears excrement about
 Furries all over some popular video site or other, Furries ought to
 come together, and use their strengths and their know-how to produce
 not only a reply, not only video reply, but something that educates
 as well as refutes slanders, lies, and falsehoods. The core reason
 why people as a whole are so willing to accept and ingrain a
 negative image of Furries is because there is a vacuum of
 information, a lack of experience, and a damning silence from those
 of us most affected and most hurt by those who would hurt us.

I agree here. Openness and acceptance of outsiders is the only way for the furry fandom's image to be improved.

 The reason that more of this work is not getting done is because
 there is an alarming population of self-centered, self-absorbed,
 shit-for-brains Furries among us, just as among the great unwashed,
 uncaring mundane population out there.

. . . wait, what?

 Charity begins at home, but so does necessary change. There's a
 whole segment of Furries out there who are so focused on their
 minuscule corner of existence that they have no faculty that warns
 them they are being thrown on a dung heap along with the rest of us,
 and together we do nothing about it.

 I'd like to sharpen my claws on some of these elitist, snobbish, (in
 no particular order) Fur Suit-ers, Tin-plated Convention "gods",
 Hucksters, "Comic Artists", mailing list Nazis, and (tossing bricks
 at my own glass house) Furry Porn Writers and Collectors who are
 more interested in their threads of the Furry fabric then they are
 in the cloth as a whole. When you pull long enough and hard enough
 on the warp and the weft of a fabric, it invariably unravels. This
 is what has happened, leaving holes for people who don't like us to
 crawl into and to exploit.

. . .  oh my god.

One moment you're preaching openness and acceptance, the next moment, you're spouting this kind of hateful nonsense?  Pot, meet kettle.

 If you are furry, and your first thought has to do with "your"
 (next) convention, you need to be slapped.

 If you are furry, and your first thought is about your fur suit,you
 need to be slapped.

 If you are furry, and your first thought is about your comic book,
 comic strip, or comic story, you need to be slapped.

 If you are furry, and your first thought is about writing furry
 porn, to be posted on any kind of website, or printed on dead trees,
 or collected on your server, you need to be slapped too.

 Now some may take slapping as a violent act, at odds with my
 previously expressed philosophy of nonviolence. Administering a
 physical slap to someone can be an act of violence. But there are
 times, particularly in moments of urgency, where the shock of a slap
 may restore the senses, and a sense of self-preservation in an
 individual, or in this case a group of individuals.

. . . in short, if you treat the fandom as a hobby instead of a lifestyle, you need to be slapped?

Honestly, the majority of the fandom considers it just that, a hobby.  They're not interested in your crusade because it's not the core of what they are.  They aren't just furries.

 To bring this discussion back around, I am seeing all this from high
 on a hill made of years. I have seen in that vista how far I have
 come, and taken in how far I have yet to go. But perfection is
 neither the hill, nor the vista. Our quest is the road we travel in
 order to climb the hill and see the vista we must use to get and
 maintain our bearings.

 There have been more attacks on Furries in the last five years than
 in the last twenty-five years. More attacks in the last five than in
 the last fifteen years, and more attacks in the past five years than
 in the last ten. They increase geometrically because the technology
 increases in the same fashion. Because opportunity and ease of
 opportunity increases along with technology. And the only thing that
 remains the same is our own sickening self-determination to do
 absolutely nothing and so sell our dreams down the river to be used
 as doormats by Mundanes as they trudge along the muddy river banks
 of a dull, empty, existence.

. . . again, dull and empty?  Many so-called Mundanes live fulfilling, happy lives without ever having heard of the furry fandom.  Many of the detractors enjoy mocking the fandom as a distraction.  They take a couple of minutes to write a flame, go off and do something else, and come back in a few hours to laugh at the results.

 If we have been given or have found something within ourselves which
 is of true value,and it can help bring a gentler, and somewhat more
 lofty aspect to the next generations of human existence, then there
 must come a time when we are willing to fight for it, as well as to
 fight along side it, in defense of what we believe, and in defense
 of the truths we perceive.

. . . *headdesks*  If you somehow think that liking anthropomorphic animals gives a gentler and more lofty aspect to the next generations of human existence, I'm sorry, but you're hopeless.  The day that a furry wins the Nobel Peace Prize is that day that I'll accept that argument.

 To many of you have forgotten your roots, and forgotten the gifts
 you've been given. Stop laying down.

 Stand up instead, and come together, so we can stand up for the
 truth as we've come to know it, and so we can share it with those
 who seek it in the same way which we do.

My response is this:

No.

The truth is, furry is a fandom.  It's a hobby.  Not a lifestyle.  Maybe for you it is, but not for me.  Honestly, I find it sad that you consider it so important to your being that you need to stand up for it and look down upon those who are not members of this fandom.

Acceptance by outsiders won't come from behaving in an elitist and superior manner.  Acceptance will come when furries show that they are ordinary people as well.  And going around lashing out at "Mundanes" isn't the way to do it.  The way to do it is fourfold:

A. Mind our own business.
B. Gently correct misconceptions by outsiders.
C. Let outsiders wee what we're really about.
D. Maintain a light heart.  Humor is the ultimate weapon against hatred and ignorance.

Your journal doesn't help.  All it does is reinforce the image of furry as a group of elitist pricks who think they are so much better than other people because they like anthropomorphic animals or beleive they are animals at heart.  You've set what you want to accomplish back.

The Mocaw