If you think SOPA is more important than whether a woman should be forced to testify in front of a court and then drive across 2 states to secure a first trimester abortion after being raped, then you're an asshole.
I do, because equitable access to information through a global network is as fundamental a human right as I can imagine. Maintain the network and peoples' right to self-expression on it, and I have to believe the other problems will solve themselves.
Meanwhile, abortion is just a wedge issue, IMHO. Most threats to reproductive freedom in the US are empty ones. The GOP (and the judges they appoint) will never repeal Roe v. Wade, because as soon as they do, they will no longer be able to use it to scare up votes from the Slow Folk. Instead, they will have woken a sleeping dragon and filled it with a terrible resolve. Even the dumbest Republican legislator has got to understand that.
Likewise, same-sex marriage rights are as inevitable as Loving v. Virginia was. The Republicans screaming and yelling about it today will spend the rest of their careers trying to make people forget they ever had an opinion on the subject, just as their fathers had to do with respect to the Civil Rights movement.
In general the Religious Right has a long history of being courted with wine and roses by the GOP and then left crying at the altar. One thing you can say about social conservatives of all stripes is that they have a boundless respect for history and tradition and zero interest in learning from either.
A free Internet, however, is not an inevitability. It will have to be fought over. It's the biggest deal there is, because it can and will change things. If you don't believe that, we won't agree on much else.
I do, because equitable access to information through a global network is as fundamental a human right as I can imagine. Maintain the network and peoples' right to self-expression on it, and I have to believe the other problems will solve themselves.
Meanwhile, abortion is just a wedge issue, IMHO. Most threats to reproductive freedom in the US are empty ones. The GOP (and the judges they appoint) will never repeal Roe v. Wade, because as soon as they do, they will no longer be able to use it to scare up votes from the Slow Folk. Instead, they will have woken a sleeping dragon and filled it with a terrible resolve. Even the dumbest Republican legislator has got to understand that.
Likewise, same-sex marriage rights are as inevitable as Loving v. Virginia was. The Republicans screaming and yelling about it today will spend the rest of their careers trying to make people forget they ever had an opinion on the subject, just as their fathers had to do with respect to the Civil Rights movement.
In general the Religious Right has a long history of being courted with wine and roses by the GOP and then left crying at the altar. One thing you can say about social conservatives of all stripes is that they have a boundless respect for history and tradition and zero interest in learning from either.
A free Internet, however, is not an inevitability. It will have to be fought over. It's the biggest deal there is, because it can and will change things. If you don't believe that, we won't agree on much else.