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 actually think he's both. There is such a thing as anti-gay bigotry that isn't homophobic -- that's just flippant and knee-jerk and rests on an unexamined assumption of the deviance/inferiority of homosexuality, but that perceives it as more of an annoyance or an absurdity than a threat. Card is positively *terrified.* The fear drips off everything he writes -- from a fear of his children being kicked out of schools for being insufficiently gay-positive to the fear that America will collapse because, I can't remember, no one will want to join the military to support a government that takes away their right to moral superiority. I mean, it's all the bizarre rantings of one of that particular brand of right-winger that sees danger, conspiracy, and enemies everywhere. It's about nothing but fear.

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