It's not a controversial topic at all. It's just a silly topic. And there are loads of bullshit threads that spawn endless debate that get posted in Spam. You can't use that one as a reason, especially before any debating even begins.

My problem is that it looks like it Spam xenophopia and pseudo-mob mentality pushed a thread into the redzone when it had no business being locked yet.

Sure, it was a shitty thread, but it shouldn't have been locked. At most it should have been ignored, and at least didn't need to be filled with the standard "fuck off" x 5.

Disclaimer: I'm not even against getting rid of threads that are going to end badly or that and just plain shitty. I'm against it being so arbitrary.