As I understood it at the time, one drama queen (deeply vested with one of the US main political parties) threatened to leave the site if the soapbox doesn't close and since they are considered to be a great author (never read anything from them so I can't tell), obviously the choice was to keep the author generating traffic and close the soapbox that was giving the mods headache anyway.
Like everyone said in here, the civility is the main problem here. The question arises though, what sort of person are you, if you can't keep your communication civil at all times? I can have heated debates on political causes close to my heart, I can shout, sigh with desperation that my opponent doesn't acknowledge my point, but I would never take that and use it against them in other parts of the website (do I understand correctly that somebody actually said something in the lines "Your story would have been good but since you are Democrat, it's sh*te"?).
Also, if you are an author who is venerated throughout the website, published in the Premium section, etc., and you don't like the treatment you're getting in Soapbox, why are you going in there in first place???
Anyway, the fact is, we don't pay for anything in here unless we choose to go Premium and I don't imagine that generates much of revenue. The website is surely quite pricey to run, even if it's only volunteers who admin and mod here. So the main concern will be to generate money while providing place for stories a notch above Nifty. That it could be a main meeting hub for LGBT community where we could discuss issues of gay life as Adam mentions in his blog doesn't have to concern the owners of the website. After all, there is only that far they can go with their charity to the community.
As a P.S. I'm adding my personal pet peevee: I still find it incredulous that you are not allowed to post erotic pictures in here, say a blog where they post cats and kittens in cute pictures on one side and men posing in similar positions like those cats in the other. There are no genitals (or I don't remember seeing any) but it was not allowed to be posted in here. Again, I point out, that the 12 and 13 year olds that come to this website can read all sorts of obscenities in the stories here (and let their imagination run wild) but got forbid they see a hot man in here.