User blog comment:Mrdaimion/Serious Sam Issue 1 - Abortion/@comment-1874924-20120208061322

I've been watching how this discussion has gone, and I'm now of the opinion that this series should avoid highly divisive topics in the future, particularly issues where "political correctness" could come into play. Why? Because the risk/reward balance appears to be poor.

Although we managed to keep the discussion civil this time, that's partly because we really didn't have much discussion at all. There were a lot of comments, but most of the commenters did little more than state (and occasionally restate) their positions. We risked generating a lot of ill will for--what? We now know where a number of our fellow wikians stand on the abortion issue, but did anyone really re-examine their opinions based on this discussion? If not, then I submit that this blog has failed.

For those of you who write stories, would you be willing to lose a substantial portion of your readers for expressing an opinion? That's a very real possibility, considering the number of people who (for example) refuse to listen to Wagner's music for no other reason than because Hitler liked it. (Wagner died before Hitler was born.) All too many people have been taught what to think instead of how to think, and by corollary have been taught contempt for those with different worldviews. Don't let anyone tell you that this is any less common on the left than on the right--the left merely chooses different victims. (If any of you know Winter-Rae at fanfiction.net, her profile page notes that she lost half of her story reviewers when she "came out" as a conservative Christian. "And people call me close [sic] minded" she says, and she has a very good point.) There are issues where, if I were to make my opinion known, I would very likely lose many or even most of my readers and probably a number of my wiki-friends. That wouldn't stop me, but the point remains.