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By the way, it's interesting that at Bill James Online, he freely mixes politics, "ethics," philosophy, etc. into his discussions at about a 10%, 20% air/fuel mixture.  
He'll keep several themes running at a time; he might be discussing steroids in one conversation... discussing Joe Paterno and lynch-mob mentality in another ... discussing racism in a third.
And it works out great.  It doesn't degenerate into flame wars.  The entire site continues to discuss baseball, and non-baseball, matters intelligently and civilly.
The common assumption is that the very mention of ethics, religion, values, politics, etc., guarantees a degeneration of the idea exchange.  I think that's tantamount to admitting that we're all 6-year-old brats.  
We are adults here, and we are not incapable of disagreeing intelligently.  On the contrary, we should expect that of ourselves, to be able to exchange ideas intelligently when we disagree.  This is true also, when the ideas are important and there is a lot at stake.
Are we adults, or aren't we?   So let's converse.