hth | oh, and also, OSC? fuck you.

oh, and also, OSC? fuck you.

I don't know if I could really respond better than this to the latest salvo of unhinged homophobic batshittery from Orson Scott Card.

I remember reading the Memory of Earth series in college, back when it was even harder than it is now to find even vague references to homosexuality in genre fiction. One of the main characters was a gay man who married a woman because it was required of him, and I remember thinking it was just a really intelligent, poignant treatment of a character who had made this terrible choice between two mutually exclusive types of happiness. It's weird to look back now and realize that whole arc was not, as I believed at the time, *descriptive* of what it's like to live under enforced heteronormativity, but *prescriptive.* Card doesn't hate gay people; he just hates gay people who selfishly destroy civilization by refusing to enter heterosexual marriages and breed.

Oh, and by the way, the reason Card doesn't consider himself a homophobe is that he subscribes to a very specific definition of the word, where homophobia means a fear of homosexuality that is so crippling as to interfere with one's life. Well, I sort of think he's crossed that bridge now, since he's so terrified of teh gay conspiracy to destroy everything good and pure in lif that he can't think of any other recourse than civil war. That sort of seems like it's getting in the way of being, you know, a normal human being who doesn't want to incite civil wars? Oh, and also, a lot of his former fans now wouldn't buy one of his books if it came with a lifetime's supply of cool shoes and lubricant, so it's not been a great boon to his career, either.

Also, fuck Orson Scott Card.

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I don't understand this whole "threat to marriage" concept. Does marriage even exist as an independent concept? I look around at all the married folks I know (including myself) and nobody seems to have exactly the same relationship, despite the unity of the label.

No one else's relationship is a threat to *my* marriage. We bring our own threats in the door and we deal with them ourselves. There's nothing the guy next door does or doesn't do with his wife or husband that makes any affect on -- or threat to -- my marriage.

I shall have to ask my parents how their son being able to marry has lowered the quality of their marriage. I´m sure it was devastating to their marriage, really.

Well, I posted a little rant upthread about what the "threat to marriage" really involves. Suffice it to say, nobody thinks your parents' marriage specifically will be damaged. They just think that they will be less able to convince future generations that they have no choice but to marry heterosexually and monogamously and bear children, and they really, desperately want people to have no choice in that matter. The threat to marriage is a threat to *compulsory* heterosexual marriage, and they're quite right about it -- we are trying to take away their power to compel that. They like having that power and the validation it brings, and they don't want to surrender it. Fair enough.

They're going to have to, however. Hell, if George Wallace learned to deal with modernity, so can Orson Scott Card.

I was going to say, you know, that presumably allowing gay marriage will make marriage more appealing to future generators of, you know, gay people, but then I remembered that Card's argument is that gays totally have equal rights already, given that they have the same right to marry someone of the opposite gender as a heterosexual has, much like everyone in a theocracy has the same right to practice the state religion (I'm sure he totally supports that in, like, Iran.)

Well, you can say that because you don't regard compulsory marriage as the only frail mechanism propping up civilization. Card does. When people like him say gay marriage is a "threat to marriage," they don't mean the specific marriage of OSC and Kristin, or Barak and Michelle, or Barb and Seth -- they mean that not continuing to compel all people to enter monogamous, heterosexual, child-bearing relationships is dangerous to society as a whole.

That's right, he hates you, too. You do not participate in the "reproductive cycle of life," and you are a living, breathing advertisement of the fact that in our society, having children is optional, a matter of personal preference. And Card can't bear the idea that families should have anything to do with personal preference. He thinks there's one way to do it and one way only -- he's referred to everything other than Mom, Dad, and their kids as "mere groupings of people," undeserving of the right to be called families at all.

Gay marriage -- like at-will divorce, like single parenthood, and like selfish heathens such as yourself -- *are* a threat to Card's reality, because what he favors is bringing every possible mechanism of the church, state, and society to bear to force us into his particular vision of marriage. The more people refuse to agree with him that his particular vision of marriage should be compulsory, the more people will certainly opt out of it (and have been opting out of it, and are, and will continue to do so). That's what he's afraid of: not that it will harm him and Kristen, but that it will harm his ability to mandate "marriage" as he defines it on other people whether they like it or not.

Which it will.

Although, I did read him say at some point that, while we were not reproducing, at least we were still providing a good example to other children as a heterosexual married couple. *headdesk*

And I always wonder -- is he afraid that without the government mandating otherwise, everyone is going to decide to turn gay?

Yes, he's as much said that. Something about how since it's easier for men to understand men, and women to understand women, that if given the option to marry their own sex, people would not choose to marry the opposite one.

Which makes me raise my eyebrows and wonder "if you think socially approved gay relationships are so overwhelmingly attractive, are you sure *you* are straight?"

It's very wacky logic, to say the least.

I really try not to assign motive to strangers, and also not to assume that all homophobes are themselves hiding teh gay -- but honestly, some people just seem to beg for it.

It was one of the least comprehensible arguments I've ever seen, that's for sure.

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