Pennsylvania residents, take note: HB 1510/SB 974, the Pennsylvania Fairness Act, would amend the Pennsylvania Human Relations Act of 1955 to outlaw certain forms of discrimination on the basis of "sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression"; these protections would prevent discrimination in "employment, housing and public accommodation." The election of Democrat Tom Wolf as Governor has apparently turned the Republican-held Pennsylvania state legislature into one of the most reactionary in the nation, but, as usual, it doesn't matter what they want, it matters what we want -- polling shows widespread support for the bill, after all. Hence the ACLU helps you tell your Pennsylvania state legislators to ensure fair treatment under the law for gay and transgendered folks. Don't believe the morons who mockingly ask who's next to get special protections from the government? and then make absurd lists of nonexistent groups. It's lazy, at best, to accuse people of defending protections they haven't actually defended, and it's far worse than lazy to call equal rights for us "special protections" for others.
Meanwhile, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell the FCC to protect your private information from being sold online without your consent, then Free Press still helps you do that. Dig some of the anti-privacy talk coming from the corporatist right about this -- no, not the "fear" that strong privacy protections will "break the internet," nor all that tiresome ALL BIG GUBMINT REGULASHUNZ BAD!!!! talk from people who aren't imaginative enough to make money and protect privacy at the same time, but the notion that people will lose out if we demand that internet corporations protect our privacy! I've heard this from a few corporate flacks, and I guess they really think being shown ads based on where you've been on the internet is really an opportunity for you to buy new stuff, versus an opportunity for them to make money off you buying new stuff. Worse than that, of course, is that their argument is illogical -- people who really want ads pushed on them like that would, under the FCC proposal, have the freedom to give consent to participate in that activity. It's enough to make you think corporations just hate our freedoms.
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