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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.
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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Date: 2008-08-12 02:16 pm (UTC)From:Enderr's Game is one of the best books of modern SF, and the sequels, while they deteriorate in quality, still say these wonderful, deeply moral things about understanding and forgiveness and peace and acceptance.
When I realized that the man who wrote them was a complete bigot- PROUD of being a bigot, not even trying to hide it in polite society- I was crushed. It seems like a betrayal, you know? Someone who wrote so beautifully shouldn't be *allowed* to be so despicable. Or someone so despicable shouldn't be *able* to write so beautifully. It's a big fat warning sign against admiring a writer as a *person* based only on their fiction. You can write moral stories and still be an immoral douche.
I could have been his biggest fan. Instead, I do everything I can to keep people from buying his work. *shrug*
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Date: 2008-08-12 04:19 pm (UTC)From:I know what you mean about the sense of betrayal. I just keep wanting to go up to him and be like, "Speaker for the Dead -- SPEAKER FOR THE DEAD!!!" Did he *read* the fucking book? That's actually why I think of him as qualitatively less sane than the average bigot; I think the amount of cognitive dissonance it must require to be theoretically for all the things Card is theoretically for, and yet to put them all in abeyance at the sight of certain triggers -- there's just no way to look at that except as a type of insanity.
I felt the same way, btw, when I found out Paul Haggis was a Scientologist. I just kept imagining trying to explain to Fraser what a "suppressive person" is, and it honestly made me want to cry.
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Date: 2008-08-12 05:33 pm (UTC)From:(Though, imagining Fraser's reaction to that conversation is fairly entertaining)