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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 05:33 pm (UTC)From:nutjobperson, 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 flyand 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".