July 29th, 2008
by
Yonmei
Orson Scott Card, folks:
The first and greatest threat from court decisions in California and Massachusetts, giving legal recognition to “gay marriage,” is that it marks the end of democracy in America.
Because when same-sex couples can marry, that means the majority won’t have been allowed to vote away a basic civil right – the “freedom to marry” from a minority. Which means the date on which democracy ended in America was actually 12th June 1967, when the judges on the US Supreme Court made a new law without any democratic process, striking down laws all over America that were enacted by majority vote: the judges asserted that the freedom to marry was a “basic civil right” because it was “one of the vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness”. (I do like that phrase: “the orderly pursuit of happiness”. Yay.)
Of course, the democracy that Orson Scott Card says died on 12th June 1967, was an issue for James Madison, who wrote in The Federalist No. 51, on Wednesday, 6th February 1788:
It is of great importance in a republic not only to guard the society against the oppression of its rulers, but to guard one part of the society against the injustice of the other part. Different interests necessarily exist in different classes of citizens. If a majority be united by a common interest, the rights of the minority will be insecure. There are but two methods of providing against this evil: the one by creating a will in the community independent of the majority — that is, of the society itself; the other, by comprehending in the society so many separate descriptions of citizens as will render an unjust combination of a majority of the whole very improbable, if not impracticable.
Orson Scott Card further asserts that the freedom of same-sex couples to marry each other was unthinkable through all of human history until Thursday 24th July 1993. I’m not sure why he picks that date in particular: the first national government to legislate civil unions for same-sex couples was Denmark, in 1989: same-sex couples in the US and elsewhere had been marrying without benefit of civil ceremony for decades before that: and through most of recorded human history, same-sex couples have been marrying with or without legal or religious ceremonies. However, Orson Scott Card dismisses the historical and social records of this as “obvious fiction”, and argues that this means the judges that determine constitutional law are using equality as a “pretext” – that this is an “obvious overreach”, “far beyond any rational definition of their authority”.
He goes on (as you might expect) to argue that this is just like Roe vs. Wade – that allowing a woman the right to make her own reproductive decisions led to people not being allowed to “kneel and pray” in front of of health clinics if the staff carry out abortions there. He’s wrong about that. Anyone is allowed to kneel down and pray in front of any clinic, if they don’t mind well-read Christians pointing out to them that
And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full. But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. Matthew 5,5-6
this kind of public prayer was specifically condemned by Jesus as the kind of thing hypocrites do.
Then he gets all anguished about textbooks for children in grade school that show same-sex couples getting married (do these textbooks actually exist? If not, why not?) and that parents may not even be able to stop teachers using those textbooks to teach their children! This is “undemocratic, unconstitutional and intolerant” . (There is an interesting account of the polygamist Mormon relationship with the public school system in the US in a four part series first published in the Prescott Daily Courier by Al Herron, back in July 2003. This is not something that Orson Scott Card has ever felt any need to attack, though.)
I think what Orson Scott Card is referring to in this paragraph:
And if you choose to home-school your children so they are not propagandized with the “normality” of “gay marriage,” you will find more states trying to do as California is doing — making it illegal to take your children out of the propaganda mill that our schools are rapidly becoming.
is that California has recently taken several steps to require even Christian colleges to have certain basic standards for accepting students – which in turn means that home-schooled children have to learn about evolution if they want to study biological science at college, and have to be allowed to read novels whole and entire when they study English, instead of reading only the sections which Christian educators have decided are suitable for the young. (Oh, and he may be objecting to SB-777 too – a lot of Christians did object to that anti-discrimination/anti-bullying bill.)
He adds, rather pathetically, that after all his essays The Hypocrites of Homosexuality, and Homosexual “Marriage” and Civilization are “the mildest of comments critical of the political agenda of homosexual activists” and yet because of them he has been called a homophobe for years. (I have to say, Orson, should you read this, those essays also cast in a new light the awful events of Songmaster and Homecoming.) He riffs a bit on how “homophobia” was coined to describe someone who was mentally ill about LGB people, and he’s not mentally ill or anything, he just doesn’t want LGB people to have the same basic civil rights as straight people, that’s all.
He then claims that ” back in the ’70s and ’80s” when “gay rights were being enforced by the courts ” (they were?) the proponents of gay rights promised “they would never attempt to legalize gay marriage”. Well, there was certainly a strong feeling among many LGBT rights activists/feminists that marriage was a heterosexual institution, and that queer people shouldn’t try to imitate the institutions of straights. That much is true. What Orson Scott Card seems to have missed is that once marriage becomes legally equal – once there is no legal difference made between husband and wife – there is no rational argument to be made that same-sex couples can’t get married. But Orson Scott Card seems to feel aggrieved that a promise he feels was made to him that LGB people got legal equality only by promising that they wouldn’t ask for marriage too, then broke that promise “in about 15 minutes”. (I have no idea which 15 minutes he’s talking about.)
He then asserts:
And you can guess how long it will now take before any group that speaks against “gay marriage” being identical to marriage will be attacked using the same tools that have been used against anti-abortion groups — RICO laws, for instance.
RICO laws, as I understand it, are used against organised crime. Pro-life terrorist groups who conspire to attack clinics and hospitals and doctors for providing abortions, might well have RICO laws used against them. It is interesting that Orson Scott Card calls this “speaking against”, as if he thinks arson is just a word. (And he evidently strongly objects to the law being used against such terrorist groups, for all he’s quite sanctimonious that he’s not actually advocating violence against LGBT people. No, just arguing that people who do use violence shouldn’t be prosecuted.)
Orson Scott Card has in the past made clear that he’s ignorant of the history of marriage, but he repeats his claim here:
Marriage is older than government. Its meaning is universal: It is the permanent or semipermanent bond between a man and a woman, establishing responsibilities between the couple and any children that ensue.
He is absolutely wrong about this: it’s hard to say how much wronger than wrong. Not only about this definition of marriage being “universal”, but about this definition of marriage being “older than government”. (“Government” began the first time a group of more than about 50 humans tried to live together.)
He claims too that “There is no branch of government with the authority to redefine marriage.” This is kinda sad and strange for a Mormon to claim, since Utah was only allowed to become a state in the US after the state government of Utah redefined marriage. Of course, for some Mormons, it’s true, they never accepted that a mere government had that authority, and continued to give and take wives as the Prophet ordered and regardless of what the girls and women given and taken felt about it.
The first moment of common sense in this essay (and the last) where he points out:
The laws concerning marriage did not create marriage, they merely attempted to solve problems in such areas as inheritance, property, paternity, divorce, adoption and so on.
True. People want to get married. They do so even when the government says they can’t. Government legislation on marriage merely makes specific the rights, responsibilities, and obligations married couples have to and about each other. There is no reason in the world, unless you’re a raving homophobe, why same-sex couples (and their children) should be excluded from those rights, responsibilities, and obligations.
Orson Scott Card then claims that what legal same-sex marriage means is that (distentangling his complex rhetoric) we’re trying to have an act of court or Congress declare that sexual attraction and bonds of affection and friendship between same-sex couples are now the same as heterosexual intercourse, and that this declaration is absurd as passing an act that says blind people are now sighted people and can therefore drive cars.
For Card, apparently, marriage is all about heterosexual intercourse. Without heterosexual intercourse, marriage isn’t marriage, and “this is a permanent fact of nature”. Marriage is not about affection, friendship, sexual attraction, rights, responsibilities, and obligations: it’s about a man and a woman “coupling”. I’m sure you married folks in the audience are glad to know that.
(And he promises – I look forward to this with glee, I tell you, glee! – that he’s going to give us the opportunity to mock him more in a future column as he talks “seriously and candidly” about “the state of scientific research on the causes of homosexuality” – ooh, this is going to be fun!)
You see, Card feels that as there is “no natural method by which two males or two females can create offspring in which both partners contribute genetically” and also because of the “long mammalian tradition of heterosexuality” and despite so many people having “sex-role dysfunctions” – that means only a mixed-sex couple should be allowed to get married. Because it’s very, very important that marriage should only be allowed to families where “a father and a mother collaborate in rearing children that share a genetic contribution from both parents”.
Where couples adopt children together, or when they have children together using AID, or when two people with children from previous relationships are living together, they shouldn’t be allowed to marry.
Also, Orson Scott Card lets on that living with Kristine Scott Card is “doing something that is very, very hard”, because he and Kristine have all these “physical and personality differences”. Fortunately, it seems that neither of them are sterile, and none of their children are adopted, so they could be allowed to get married. Even though it’s been very, very hard. He feels it’s vital that the whole of society combine to help him and Kristine succeed at marriage.
(Oh, he does then go on to explain that being sterile or adopting children doesn’t bar mixed-sex couples from marriage because if mixed-sex couples weren’t allowed to get married just because they didn’t have children, children might grow up thinking that marriage for mixed-sex couples wasn’t a universal pattern. And mixed-sex couples can “generously confer the blessings of marriage” on adopted children, though same-sex couples can’t.)
Ironically, from what Card says, it sounds like he’s even more twitchy about polygamy than he is about gay marriage, though I don’t believe he’s ever written anything against those fellow religionists of his in the American South-West. (He claims here in a column dated October 2007 that the Mormon Church long ago abandoned polygamy – and uses that lie to spark an Islamophobic riff about how American Muslims kill apostates and Islam is bad.)
I’ve been trying not to quote too much of this, but this part are particularly mockable. Orson Scott Card claims that it’s a “basic premise” that a wife is always sexually faithful to her husband, and another such that a husband always devotes “all of his protection and earning power” to one wife.
These two premises are so basic that they preexist any known government. In most societies through history, failure to live up to these commitments has led to extreme social sanctions — even, in many cases, death.
Words fail me. Some of these assertions actually go beyond mockery. You just stare at them, sort of wonderingly, contemplating whether he is actually that stupid or if he thinks the people reading his column are.
Swiftly moving on, Orson Scott Card then blames straight people for bringing marriage into disrepute by the following set of five horrors: no-fault divorce, cohabiting mixed-sex couples (who are, apparently, not just living together, but “showing their contempt for marriage”), unmarried women having babies, unmarried men paying child support, men “routinely discarding” wives and children. He claims that adultery is now “openly expected” of men, and only deplored by “faithful wives”. (My god, poor Kristine: Orson claims “the nearly universal male biological desire for diversity in mating”.)
Aside from the last horror of the set (or last two horrors: but I’m not sure how seriously we’re expected to take his assertion that people openly expect him to commit adultery) the first four are one and all feminist issues. As Orson Scott Card made clear in his rant about J. K. Rowling, he’s a spluttering misogynist: he especially doesn’t seem to like the idea that a woman can decide to have a baby and then the law will require the baby’s father to pay child support as an absent parent. (As I noted in a comment in an earlier thread, two hundred years ago in the UK it was quite lawful for a man to abandon his wife – with or without the children – without any means of support whatsoever.)
Orson Scott Card claims that it’s the job of government to support marriage in general – but only if marriage means
Faithful sexual monogamy, persistence until death, male protection and providence for wife and children, female loyalty to children and husband, and parental discretion in child-rearing.
If the wife has sex with another man, if either have a legal right to no-fault divorce, if the man fails to “protect and provide for” his wife and children (Shari’a law too requires this) and if the mother isn’t loyal to her children and her husband and if the parents aren’t allowed to do what they like to their children, then, Card argues, marriage isn’t worth preserving – might as well leave it to same-sex couples.
You may think I was exaggerating when I referred to Orson Scott Card as a terrorist. Not because of his tacit support for pro-life terrorism (and support in advance for homophobic terrorist groups). No. Because he asserts here:
Because when government is the enemy of marriage, then the people who are actually creating successful marriages have no choice but to change governments, by whatever means is made possible or necessary.
Because if parents aren’t allowed to impose on their children the requirement that their “spawn” (yes, Card used that word) will get married and make grandchildren, then “Why should married people feel the slightest loyalty to a government or society that are conspiring to encourage reproductive and/or marital dysfunction in their children?” Seriously. Orson Scott Card argues that if the government is going to require that children have to go to school, and if schools are going to teach children that same-sex marriage is legal and that living together without getting married is legal and that having children outside marriage is legal, and let them read books in which these dreadful things happen, and have teachers who have done these dreadful things themselves, then “married people” ought to refuse to accept the authority of the government.
Seriously. Orson Scott Card is advocating that “married people” overthrow the US government by force and violence.
Regardless of law, marriage has only one definition, and any government that attempts to change it is my mortal enemy. I will act to destroy that government and bring it down, so it can be replaced with a government that will respect and support marriage, and help me raise my children in a society where they will expect to marry in their turn.
This is one of the things that will get you banned from entering the US: I sure hope Orson Scott Card doesn’t plan on visiting any SF conventions outside the US in future, certainly not in the UK, because they won’t let him back into the US now, and I wouldn’t want to have him stuck here…
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- More blogging by
Yonmei at
http://yonmei.insanejournal.com
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Filed under Sexuality & queerness, activism | Comments (40)
You know, for the last six years I’ve been wondering when OSC was going to come out with this kind of full-fledged screed. Guess the timer finally went off, no? I don’t think I have anything to say that you haven’t already said, other than well, damn.
(Yonmei, you always write about the things I’m interested in. How do you do that?)
What I thought was weird is…he called homosexuals “tragic genetic mixups” partway through the piece, which at first gave me some faint hope that maybe even he had given up on the “being gay is a choice” stance so many idiots put forth…but then near the end, part of what he rails against public schools for is teaching children that “…homosexuality is as valid a choice as heterosexuality for their future lives”. Which is it, Orson?
Bene, thank you. Possibly I ate your brains? *urps* Sorry! Can you grow more? Those were tasty.
Sandy, I’m very much looking forward to reading Card’s current misunderstanding of scientific research about sexual orientation. I’m sure it will be …interesting.
But I think Card holds the position that even if a gay man can’t actually have any sexual feeling for a woman, he still ought to get married to one and manage to overcome his distaste for her body for long enough to get her pregnant. He outlines such a marriage in Homecoming, and we discover in his infamous “Civilisation” essay that he regarded this marriage as the best a gay man could hope for. Kristine has evidently never let on to him that women can have sexual feelings too.
oh, for crying out loud. I was afraid it was something like that. Excuse me while I go throw up.
Pretty much everything Card says is a corollary of “the Alpha Males should control everybody’s sexuality, ESPECIALLY the women’s.” The sentiment is probably exactly as old as patriarchal religion itself.
Thank you for saving me having to actually read his latest crackery.
Maybe this is the direction the child-free panel at Wiscon should take next year. Talking about OSC and his writings would at least tie it into science fiction and fantasy.
Card certainly is aware of the detailed history of polygamy in his church. I read “Saints”. Then again, maybe he had an aneurysm burst since he wrote that and no longer remembers. It might also explain why he hasn’t written anything readable for years.
Pocket Nerd – true. Hence the large number of boys made homeless by Mormon tradition from the polygamous communities – the Alpha Males drive them from their homes.
J Andrews, the next convention I’m going to is Redemption: I think I might propose a panel to discuss “Can We Like Orson Scott Card Anymore?”
(Answer, for me: I have difficulties. See, I still like a lot of his early writing, sort of – it’s just that the more I know about his political opinions, especially of me, the more distasteful I find the horrible characters who express opinions like his – now I know he likes/agrees with them.)
King Rat: I do find it interesting that Card so frequently talks about marriage as if he were not aware of any polygamous traditions existing anywhere. He has a degree in anthropology from Notre Dame and he has his own religious background: it’s one of the areas where we know for sure he’s lying for rhetorical effect, rather than possibly just stupidly confused and very ignorant.
Anyone else wondering, idly, if the laddie doth protest too much? I mean, consider his apparent conviction that gay men should marry women and raise children because that’s their duty, coupled with the statement that his marriage is very difficult. Wouldn’t be the first time that the self-loathing of the closet manifested as virulent homophobia, would it?
Also, this:
“Which means the date on which democracy ended in America was actually 12th June 1967, when the judges on the US Supreme Court made a new law without any democratic process”
really needs to be shouted from the rooftops, so that those who might be swayed by the mendacious arguments of the bigots (that “activist judges” have no business giving minorities civil rights because it just isn’t “democratic”) can see that it is identical to the racist bollocks of 40 years ago.
Nic – to be fair, Orson Scott Card’s original comments about marriage being so very very hard and needing the whole of society’s help to keep together were expressed in a kind of abstract “this is true for every man and every woman”. It was my presumption that he’s speaking from his personal experience of marriage.
Other people have argued that Orson Scott Card’s essays and novels (and short stories) add up to an obsession with homosexuality that must make him a self-hating closet case.
I don’t believe it. (I don’t not believe it, either: but if it were true, we’re never likely to find out.) I also believe that every living individual has a right to define their sexual orientation for themselves. Discussion about whether Orson Scott Card’s writings means he “must have been” gay is a discussion that I think rightly belongs to his biographers after his death, not to discussion of his political views while he’s alive.
In any case, I don’t actually care why homophobic bigots are bigoted: I only want them to be powerless and voiceless, grumbling and protesting that the beliefs they hold normal are being violated. It has been illegal to deny legal recognition to an interracial marriage in the US for 41 years. I think within Orson Scott Card’s lifetime, it will become illegal to deny legal recognition to a same-sex marriage, anywhere in the US. And I think Card sees this too, and he hates it.
I’m fine with him hating it. I just don’t want anyone thinking he has rational reasons for his hatred.
Yonmei: Fair enough, it was a not-entirely-serious observation, anyway; and as you say, his orientation is his own business.
“In any case, I don’t actually care why homophobic bigots are bigoted”
I do, somewhat, although I confess I’m not really sure why. I suppose I always hope there’s a reason for such things, however batshit – because maybe if there’s an identifiable reason, it can be overcome with either counselling or rational argument. Heh, I’m so naive, aren’t I? :-)
Thanks for the excellent post.
Enjoyed this. :)
Thanks for a great article!
In response to Nic – I also wonder if it is wise to always claim homophobes are gay. I understand that some homophobic men might be closeted, but if this is the case generally, then don’t we have a situation where homophobia is only caused by self-hating gay people.
As a gay man myself, on a superficial level I’d rather OSC was not “on my team”. But also I believe this kind of reasoning prevents straight people from taking homophobia seriously – because it’s something that only the “closets” do. I also think what’s more important is asking why a minority of men (both straight and closeted) feel threatened by same-sex intimacy – isn’t this about society’s expectations of masculinity and also ironically a fear of being labelled gay.
Yonmei–re: your 4:10 PM comment, don’t forget that the point of the Ender’s Shadow series ended up being The Meaning Of Life Is To Have (Biological and Heteronormative) Families. The series had great potential and ended up winding itself into that, which leads me to wonder if something pretty drastic happened to Card in the last ten years or so to cause this shift.
As for ‘Can we like OSC anymore?’, my jury’s out yet. His portrayal of OCD in Xenocide is the best I’ve ever read in fiction, and I can’t write him off entirely because of that.
I enjoyed reading this in conjunction with Brent Hartinger’s editorial about the Card screed on AfterElton.com:
Editorial: It’s Time to Call Out Anti-Gay Author of “Ender’s Game”
The website is organizing a campaign to contact Marvel and protest their collaborations with Card on not just the Ender’s series, but the new Iron Man comic.
Hit-or-Miss Marvel: How to contact the comics publisher regarding Orson Scott Card and other concerns
(Apologies for any link trouble; I know there’s a better way to link, but I don’t know how to do it.)
[Edited by Yonmei to turn the links into tidy HTML: Zahra, suggest you read this.]
I just want to say that I, myself, am cohabitating because I despise marriage, but most of the cohabitating people I know plan to marry someday. Either when they can agree on it, when they can afford it, or when it becomes legal in their state.
Is Utah one of those states where if you cohabitate too long you end up accidentally married?
Bene: don’t forget that the point of the Ender’s Shadow series ended up being The Meaning Of Life Is To Have (Biological and Heteronormative) Families
Yes. I think Ender’s Shadow was great, the next book not-so-great, and I stopped reading the series after it became clear that it was going to be all about Bean’s babies.
Rosa: Is Utah one of those states where if you cohabitate too long you end up accidentally married?
Yes – Alabama, Colorado, Iowa, Kansas, Montana, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Texas, Utah, and the District of Columbia. Except it’s not just “cohabitation” – there’s multiple conditions that all have to be fulfilled, including the requirement that they should have “held themselves out as and have acquired a uniform and general reputation as husband and wife”. “Common-law marriage” is generally these days fairly difficult to establish, and once established, very difficult to get out of.
[...] Orson Scott Card, homophobic terrorist, against the orderly pursuit of happiness at Feminist SF – Th… This is the reason I’m not an Orson Scott Card fan, despite liking some of his books (tags: Orson.Scott.Card homophobic) [...]
“In any case, I don’t actually care why homophobic bigots are bigoted: I only want them to be powerless and voiceless, grumbling and protesting that the beliefs they hold normal are being violated.”
I think he should have a voice, since some people actually agree with him. I don’t think that voice should be respected, at all, in the mainstream media, or by sensible people, but I think he has the right to spout his nonsense, no matter how despicable.
We should never try to take away his right to grumble this nonsense. Incitement is fine — that is free speech — actually attempting to overthrow the government, is not :)
Just my UK two pence,
Chris
Chris–I think that’s what Yonmei was getting at when she said voiceless, perhaps. He has the right to say it, but we need to get to a place here in the US where no one’s really listening…
Long way off.
[...] to blather about: Orson Scott Card finally completely loses his shit about teh gayz (commentary at FSF and Feministe), and Charlie Stross announces that he’s going to deliberately make sure all [...]
I never managed to get more further than 40-50 pages into a OSC novel, despite their being well-reviewed and highly praised. The prose-unlike, say, Bruce Sterling or William Gibson or Neal Stephenson before he lost the plot- just failed to grip.
In a way, I’m glad. It would have been extremely vexing to love his writing only to discover that he is a blinkered nut-job who is tortured by other peoples, well…otherness. What makes another adult’s sexual behaviour with other consenting adults anyone elses business? What the hell is it with these dingbats like Card?
Depressing stuff.
Maybe not as far as you think, Bene – Iris Robinson, a Unionist MP, went off on a homophobic riff twice in July, and she’s now being seriously pointed at as a liability to her party because of it.
[...] Orson Scott Card, homophobic terrorist HERE [...]
“Incitement is fine — that is free speech — actually attempting to overthrow the government, is not :)”
Actually, I disagree – I think incitement is not fine – particularly if it inciting violence. Luckily, there are now laws in the UK to stop this (for both religious hatred and homophobia – for the latter see http://www.stonewall.org.uk/campaigns/1961.asp), which of course need to be sensibly balanced with the freedom of free speech.
“Actually, I disagree – I think incitement is not fine – particularly if it inciting violence. Luckily, there are now laws in the UK to stop this…”
Sorry, I was a bit flippant in my comment about incitement. There are laws against incitement to violence (on any grounds) in the UK, and have been for a long time.
That “religious hatred” law: ugh. Ugh, ugh, ugh. It is flawed, utterly, nice though it might seem to have a law for religious freedom. Fortunately, enough of a fuss was kicked up about it that the Government failed, twice, to pass it, and finally got a heavily watered down version through.
It would have been impossible to say X or Y religion damages British society because, in doing so, the person saying that could be accused of inciting religious hatred. Some of us (I’d say all of us, just people don’t realise) have legitimate, and reasonable, reasons for disliking religion (… I find hate too strong a word, because that, to me, seems not rational enough a feeling, but I guess that it what I feel towards religion).
Richard Dawkins’ statement, “To fill a world with … religions of the Abrahamic kind, is like littering the streets with loaded guns. Do not be surprised if they are used…” would not be allowed, and that is intolerable.
It would have stopped comedians making jokes to do with any religion or part of it. No Eddie Izzard impersonations of God … I can think of nothing worse ;)
As a religious leader said: “The freedom of religion means that no one has the right to attack, malign or grossly offend a faith tradition they personally do not have membership or ascribe allegiance.”
That is disgusting. How dare he.
But back to OSC. I do think he has the right to say what he said, no matter how inflammatory those remarks were.
I don’t think, just because they mightily offend me, I should stop him saying them. And that’s part of the problem: I would, and should, I think, fight for their right to say those uneducated, ill-thought things, for their free — albeit stupid — speech, even while they try to take away our rights.
It’s a bummer :)
~Chris
The Book Swede
Sorry to talk even more:
Re that homophobia law — I think the amendment to that Bill which allows people a get-out clause in the form of religious belief, should be extracted.
It’s been abused already, by a registrar who refused to perform civil partnerships, on the grounds of religion. And I don’t think religious belief should be any sort of excuse for (except because of the fact that religion promotes) bigotry.
Ah, but the UK has, as Chris points out, different restrictions on speech. On a different forum we came to the conclusion that the US gives the right to free speech, whereas the UK allows free speech. It’s a subtle difference, but the US, in establishing free speech as a right, makes it terribly hard to limit what people say unless it causes ‘a clear and present danger’. Which is, of course, relative to your political views, and so many people here US-side say inflammatory things that you couldn’t prosecute them all.
So here in the US, it’s a given that OSC has the right to say what he said unless someone accuses him of wreaking or intending to wreak direct havoc with it, and that’s really hard to prove.
I’m glad to hear about the UK legal system and that MP getting hers, though. Gives me some hope for my future home.
One of the best comments in matociquala’s LJ points out that “biological imperatives trump laws” is why gays are present in every human society that ever existed.
And the fascinating, “Regardless of law, marriage has only one definition…” fails to mention which of the thousands of definitions that have existed in human history that is.
Marriage has one definition: the one in MY head. Which is better than legal definitions, better than social dynamics studies, better than the history of my own church provides. The marriage I wish everyone had is the only REAL marriage, which is a biological imperative.
Which we must teach to all the children by careful and constant example, or they won’t know that’s their biological imperative.
Hi, I’m a visitor to your blog (someone linked to it from valleywag.com’s critique of the same article by Card).
I would just point out (though I can’t say for sure, as I am not a mind reader), that Card probably doesn’t talk about the FLDS polygamists (that’s different from the main LDS church, by the way) is because the polygamist thing isn’t as widespread as the push for same-sex marriage. He sees same-sex marriage as a much bigger problem, and the polygamist as this small fringe group. Kind of a “fry the big fish first” approach.
Cheers!
Well, SinisterMatt, I think he doesn’t talk about his co-religionists* who rape young girls and trade wives back and forth, because (a) he would have to admit that it happens and (b) he doesn’t see women being raped and forced to have mass numbers of children as a very big problem. After all, as he’s made amply clear, the important thing that matters in a matter is male-female coupling and the production of children.
*That he wouldn’t care to have them referred to as his “co-religionists”, I am well aware: but they are, whether he likes it or not: Mormons who never gave up being polygamists.
[...] about OSC’s rabidly heterosexist rant in the Mormon Times. If you haven’t check out Yonmei’s deconstruction over at Feminist SF – The Blog. Yonmei’s blogged extensively about OSC’s bigotry over on FemSF but his rant against [...]
[...] government if same-sex couples can marry in California. Curtsy Box Turtle Bulletin. See also Feminist SF Blog’s post on this, which is by far the best and most thorough post on this subject I’ve [...]
Re Mishari’s “In a way, I’m glad. It would have been extremely vexing to love his writing only to discover that he is a blinkered nut-job who is tortured by other peoples, well…otherness.”
I do love OSC’s books. Once he first started publishing the anti-gay crap a few years back I tried to decide that I would be done with him, but I reread Ender’s Game one weekend and then had to reread them all, and he is a good writer. He makes you think but his writing isn’t overly didactic. And I am extremely vexed. I don’t want to support him with my dollars or my fandom because he is using his fame for evil rather than good, and yet I can’t deny that he is a talented storyteller whom I enjoy.
What can I do? I’m rather at a loss and I just feel sad and angry.
“I don’t want to support him with my dollars or my fandom because he is using his fame for evil rather than good, and yet I can’t deny that he is a talented storyteller whom I enjoy.
What can I do? I’m rather at a loss and I just feel sad and angry.”
Get his books from your local library. Or, better yet, go into your local bookstore, read the book, and put it back on the shelf when you’re done.
It’s okay to read the books. Just don’t pay for them.
[...] is much, much more to be said about this bizarre screed, but I see that Yonmei at Feminist SF has already thoroughly and most entertainingly said it. I especially appreciated her [...]
[...] And in conclusion: Orson Scott Card, I love your books. So whyyyyy must you be a crazy homophobe? [...]
[...] predictably there are responses in the blogosphere ranging from laconic bemusement by Scalzi to rhetorical dismemberment on the Feminist SF Blog. I would like to add my own little can of lighter fluid to this raging bonfire by offering everyone [...]
Me thinks (perhaps) he protests too much.
[...] on Orson Scott Card: Orson Scott Card, homophobic terrorist, against the orderly pursuit of happiness – Yonmei, Feminist SF blog Orson Scott Card is a misogynistic homophobic wanker – [...]