But living with a secret can be isolating, and sharing your news with your wife and your son, at least, could help relieve that burden. In his response, the Ethicist noted: “The decision of whether to disclose your situation is, of course, up to you. … Am I wrong to keep this from the people I love?”

I would rather enjoy life with everyone as I have always done - and then break the news only when the time comes. I don’t want to have to endure two years of pity. He wrote: “I have not told my wife, my son or any of my friends about this. Last week’s question was from a reader who recently had been diagnosed with a terminal cancer and very likely had only two years left to live. You should be able to retain your writerly focus without trying to enforce broad zones of silence. Still, because writing can be political - for one thing, writers should be willing to address the political lives of their characters - discussions of writing are bound to touch on politics, too.

You’ve made it plain that the object of the group is to help one another with writing, not to deal with and debate his racism.īut here’s a question to put to the group: Was it a good idea to have a no-politics rule in the first place? I get that your writers’ group wouldn’t be well served by quarrels over public-policy proposals. If the result is an unproductive forum, you can start a new one and tell him he’s not welcome. He can’t complain that you’re the one violating the no-politics rule, because his fiction clearly has its own politics.

I would tell him that members have left because they find his views repugnant and that, if he sticks around, you’re going to encourage members to speak their minds about this. You haven’t kicked anyone out of the group, but your Confederacy buff has driven people out himself - not a great trade-off. I suspect that talking to this member will have no effect, because he believes his views are normal. Because of him, both new and longtime members have stopped attending. He is oblivious to the fact that his remarks are offensive to other members of our group. My problem is that we have a member whose historical fiction about the Civil War makes clear that he holds pro-Confederacy, racist and white-supremacist views. I work hard to run the group democratically. Long ago, we established a no-politics rule. It’s held at our library branch and is open to anyone. Thoughts? If you would like to share a response to today’s dilemma with the Ethicist and other subscribers in the next newsletter, fill out this form. Rules aimed at protecting animals deserve your support: Animals can do all sorts of things, but what they can’t do is advocate for themselves. All you can do is make your own report and hope for the best. If your neighbors have been reported before to the appropriate authorities, there’s little point in addressing them yourselves they’ve presumably shown they’re willing to ignore the law. and (given the statutes where you live) licensed with your State Department of Agriculture, which has an inspection program. The fact is that an operation of the sort you’re describing probably should be registered with the U.S.D.A. You shouldn’t just assume that your neighbors can’t make a legal living, however limited their English. What is the ethical thing to do? - Name Withheld, Pennsylvania We have heard that other neighbors reported this family in the past, so I’m also not sure if stopping this dog-breeding operation is a lost cause or if I’m telling myself this to justify my own inaction. I would hate for them to lose their main source of income - that’s my primary reason for not reporting them - but it does seem to come at the cost of the dogs’ welfare. These neighbors are a family who don’t speak much English, and I don’t know what the job prospects would be for the two parents outside of dog breeding. So quarters must be tight I would guess that the dogs spend a majority of the day in the basement, because that is the only conceivable space for them. All of this occurs in a two-story city row home that also houses a family of six. The dogs don’t appear to be mistreated or malnourished, but there seem to be more than 26 total - exceeding the limit in our state for both owning and selling without a license.

Our house looks out onto the yard where our neighbors let the dogs out sporadically throughout the day. I live across the street from an apparently unregistered dog-breeding operation run by our neighbors.

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