oh, and also, OSC? fuck you.

[hth]

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.

Comments

[hth-the-first.livejournal.com]

I see what you're saying, and to me, yeah, this is one of the fascinating things about Card's position. It's not so much homosexuality that bothers him, it's the entire modern (as in, within the last century or two) project of redefining marriage. The vast majority of us in the West now believe that it makes perfect sense and is only right and proper that people enter only into marriages that make them subjectively happy. That's a pretty new project, so his ultimate point is somewhat valid: Civilization was not built on companionate marriage. It's not a proven commodity yet, on the historical scale.

However, he's way out of the mainstream on this one. We've been increasingly, *rapidly,* moving toward a model of marriage that favors personal satisfaction over social interests, and by now it's essentially a done deal. Marriage SIMPLY DOES NOT mean what he thinks it ought to mean in this culture anymore. That's why it makes no sense to most of us when he says that homosexuality is natural, but that civilization depends on people doing what is unnatural for the greater good, ergo gay people ought to marry heterosexually for the good of us all. Under the currently dominant meaning, our culture identifies those as *fake* marriages, as *shams.* Only Card's preferred meaning makes that a viable option, and even most people who don't care for the idea of gay marriage generally agree that the "fake" loveless self-sacrificing marriage is a terrible idea as well.

He's just plain lost the battle to define marriage as he pleases. Our expectations of marriage are generally not the ones on which civilization was founded. Will this be the end of us all? Well, it's only been a hundred years or so since companionate marriage became a dominant cultural standard, so it could be too early to tell. But I don't think it looks like the end of us all just yet, in spite of Card's belief that enforced heterosexual marriage is the only thing that staves off complete social breakdown and mayhem.

[indywind]

I do wish every random nutjob person, however strong his convictions, would stop refrain from setting himself up as the One True Declaimer of Rightness and just... see what happens.
I mean even if pigs fly and Card is right about the OMGhorrors that would come from legalizing gay unions... what's it to him? Why not just wait and see, and let the (per him) immoral-or-gullible get their just deserts?

I'm willing to let the heterosexuals go on reproducing in their way, even though *I* think adding to population and maintaining many "traditional values" will have horrid effects on civilization... because I'm not in charge of them. I get to make my choices, not theirs. I expect my choices are well-founded, and I expect others' seem well-founded to them, so I am comfortable leaving who is more right to the test of time.

What bothers me about Card is not his position WRT gay marriage, but how he is soooo insecure over the defensibility of his choices, that he wants choice done away with by government fiat.

This is not new for him. The societies he's imagined all along have been characterized by how little choice they allow; the morals of hisstories have always included "bad things happen when people don't obey benevolent authority".

[harriet-spy.livejournal.com]

Civilization was not built on companionate marriage.

But, then, neither was it built on a definition of family as an independent single unit of man, woman, and resulting offspring. However, to grasp that would require far more ability to actually read history than your average person holding this position possesses.

[gwyndolin.livejournal.com]

That's a pretty new project, so his ultimate point is somewhat valid: Civilization was not built on companionate marriage. It's not a proven commodity yet, on the historical scale.

Except that goes against what he's said before. (If necessary, I'll find the link.) OSC has stated that marriage between man and woman is OLDER THAN GOVERNMENT, and that provides his foundation for the argument that we can and should act out against the government if they're trying to attack this marriage value that is older than time.