Dissecting Orson Scott Card, part 4

by Yonmei

This post was originally written for my livejournal, and posted there on 5th March 2004. My livejournal has since been suspended, and the post is no longer available. This series will continue: there is one more part.

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Parts 1, 2, and 3 dissecting this lying piece of bigotry were posted earlier. In summary: in Part 1, OSC made various claims for monogamous nuclear-family marriage, not many of which were actually true. In Part 2, OSC argues that civilisation stands by agonic rule over hedonic natural impulses – which is also untrue. In Part 3, OSC claims that giving same-sex couples the same access to civil rights as mixed-sex couples will somehow irretrievably damage those civil rights.

OSC calls this section ‘The Propaganda Mill’, with disturbing accuracy: it looks like that’s where he got most of his assertions, half-truths, and downright lies.

The Propaganda Mill What happens now if children grow up in a society that overtly teaches that homosexual partnering is not “just as good as” but actually is marriage?

Well, there are a whole bunch of hypotheses, based on very little data, but one thing we can be certain of: lesbian, gay, and bisexual children will grow up knowing they will be able to get married if they meet someone whom they want to marry.

Once this is regarded as settled law, anyone who tries to teach children to aspire to create a child-centered family with a father and a mother will be labeled as a bigot and accused of hate speech.

Please note: OSC makes this claim with no evidence. He seems to be arguing that same-sex marriage will come to regarded as such a good and positive thing that teaching children to aspire to anything but a same-sex marriage will be regarded as evil. Now, I certainly believe that same-sex marriage is intrinsically a good thing: it means equal access to civil rights regardless of sexuality. But I do not believe, as OSC appears to claim he believes, that same-sex marriages will come to be regarded as better than any other variety of marriage.

Can you doubt that the textbooks will be far behind? Any depictions of “families” in schoolbooks will have to include a certain proportion of homosexual “marriages” as positive role models.

This is – please note – a very different thing from claiming that same-sex marriages will come to be regarded as the best kind of marriage. Also, I have really no idea whether it’s true or not: I don’t know how textbooks are chosen in the US. If it’s anything like the UK school system, I imagine that parents, teachers, headteachers, and school governors, all have a certain amount of input into the choice of textbook – both negative and positive input. Arguing that providing positive role models in textbooks is the same thing as making one variety of marriage superior to all the rest is nonsense logic. If it were so, since positive role models of mixed-sex marriages with “Dad, Mom, and the kids” are now and always have been available in US schools, OSC has nothing to complain about. Since he equates providing positive role models with claiming superiority for those role models over any other kind of marriage, then US schools are now and always (by his own argument) claiming that “Dad, Mom, and the kids” is superior to any other kind of marriage.

Television programs will start to show homosexual “marriages” as wonderful and happy (even as they continue to show heterosexual marriages as oppressive and conflict-ridden).

I don’t know what kind of TV OSC watches. (Evidently, he never watched Queer as Folk or Buffy the Vampire Slayer, or he’d know that television can indeed show gay relationships as “oppressive and conflict-ridden”.)

I don’t watch much TV myself. But it’s a simple fact that it’s far more dramatic, if you’re writing a play or a novel or a story, to show a relationship that’s conflict-ridden than one that’s always wonderful and happy. Now, I can imagine that in a show where a gay relationship is something unusual and unique in itself, the writer might think that there’s enough conflict going on in the drama over the fact of the gay relationship without adding an additional factor by making the gay relationship itself full of conflict. But in shows the gay relationship is just part of the furniture, as it were, then the writers can introduce conflict, tension, and oppressive behaviour – all good dramatic stuff – into the relationship. Just as happened on QaF and BtVS.

This may seem odd, but I feel more contempt for OSC for using this argument than I do for almost any other argument he’s used in this essay. (I’ve felt more anger at him for other arguments, but not more contempt.) Because OSC is a writer, and a damned good one. He understands that in order to get people interested in a story, you introduce conflict. Shakespeare wrote any number of plays that depicted mixed-sex marriages as “oppressive and conflict-ridden” – Othello, anyone? Macbeth? yet if arguing honestly, OSC would not claim that just because Shakespeare was bisexual he was writing queer propaganda against mixed-sex marriages when he wrote about Iago and Bianca, or Macbeth and Lady Macbeth.

And note, honestly, while OSC hasn’t written many positive role models of same-sex relationships (Josef and Ansset, certainly) he’s written any number of novels which depict mixed-sex marriage as “oppressive and conflict-ridden”. This isn’t just another lie OSC is telling for the sake of argument: this is a lie that strikes at the roots of OSC’s profession, that of novelist and storyteller.

The propaganda mill will pound our children with homosexual marriage as a role model. We know this will happen because we have seen the fanatical Left do it many times before.

Oh, come off it. (See Part 1.)

So when our children go through the normal adolescent period of sexual confusion and perplexity, which is precisely the time when parents have the least influence over their children and most depend on the rest of society to help their children grow through the last steps before adulthood, what will happen?

Well, assuming that OSC is right, and textbooks and television are showing same-sex marriages, these children will have the help of positive role-models to grow into happy and well-balanced adults, of whatever sexuality. How can this be a bad thing, if you want the best for your children?

Already any child with any kind of sexual attraction to the same sex is told that this is an irresistible destiny, despite the large number of heterosexuals who move through this adolescent phase and never look back.

This is a classic piece of nonsense. The truth is that now, as ever, any child with any kind of sexual attraction to the opposite sex is told that this is an irresistible destiny, despite the large number of adults who once believed themselves to be heterosexual, but later came out as lesbian, gay, or bisexual. It’s true that bisexuals are shamefully often not fully accepted by the lesbian/gay community, but equally true that many straights (like Orson Scott Card in this essay) refuse to accept that bisexuality is a valid sexual preference, that bisexuals do not “become heterosexual” merely because they have partnered with someone of the opposite sex, not even if that partnership is lifelong and monogamous. One of my favourite quotes about this is from a novel first published in 1980. “Statistics. Trends. I’m seventy percent attracted to men, twenty percent attracted to women, and ten percent attracted to sheep. And one hundred percent attracted to you.” (Josef, speaking to Kyaren, Songmaster, Orson Scott Card. Excuse any slight inaccuracy in the quote: my copy is inaboxsomewhere, but I remember that quote because I’ve loved it since I first read it, in my school library in 1983.)

OSC knows – has known for at least a quarter of a century – that bisexuals exist, that bisexuality isn’t a matter of “sexual confusion and perplexity”. Yet now, because this suits his argument, he’s denying his own knowledge (and, which strikes me as a writer as just as much a betrayal, denying his own creation).

Already any child with androgynous appearance or mannerisms — effeminite boys and masculine girls — are being nurtured and guided (or taunted and abused) into “accepting” what many of them never suspected they had — a desire to permanently move into homosexual society.

This is pernicious, dangerous nonsense. It’s often horribly true that “effeminite boys and masculine girls” are taunted and abused. Homophobic bullying is a serious issue. Many children’s lives are being made a misery because of it: but OSC’s take on it, that it’s primarily a means of making children believe they’re gay, is dangerously wrong. A child’s sexuality is not formed by bullies. It’s worth noting that OSC is, in his phrasing above, treating nurturing/guidance as if it were more seriously offensive than taunting/abuse. (He can’t be ignorant enough of American public schools to believe that adults who are supportive of adolescent sexuality are more common than bullies.) In fact, what OSC is doing here is trying to set up an adult who supports adolescent discovery of their sexuality as someone trying to control adolescent sexuality. And yet, quite patently, he believes that adult control of adolescent sexuality is both possible and a good thing (I disagree with both): so long as the adult is trying to nurture/guide a confused adolescent into a forced heterosexuality. (See OSC’s advocacy of unhappy mixed-sex marriages for gay people, Part 1.)

In other words, society will bend all its efforts to seize upon any hint of homosexuality in our young people and encourage it.

Again, OSC is ignoring the plain fact: bisexuals exist. As he himself pointed out via Josef in Songmaster, human sexuality is not an either/or option, it’s a sliding scale. And sure, in an ideal world, people would be encouraged to explore all aspects of their sexuality, not forced (as OSC is advocating) to ignore or despise the parts of it that don’t fit OSC’s rigid definition of “family” or “marriage”.

Now, there is a myth that homosexuals are “born that way,” and we are pounded with this idea so thoroughly that many people think that somebody, somewhere, must have proved it. In fact what evidence there is suggests that if there is a genetic component to homosexuality, an entire range of environmental influences are also involved. While there is no scientific research whatsoever that indicates that there is no such thing as a borderline child who could go either way.

Amazing! OSC backtracks (though he still can’t bring himself to use the word “bisexual”). Perfectly true, though phrased oddly. The fact is, we really don’t know what the sources of human sexuality are. In my family, I’m exclusively lesbian, my brother is exclusively straight, my sister is bisexual with a strong preference for the opposite sex. Yet we all grew up in what even OSC would have to admit was a family: Dad, Mum, and the kids. (And yes, Dad and Mum were and still are married, and AFAIK are both straight, though of course we’ve never discussed it….)

There may be a genetic component that influences sexuality, but OSC is quite right: there’s likely to be an entire range of influences. But one thing has been agreed on by all but the most fanatic of ideologues: by the time a human being reaches adolescence, their sexuality is pretty much fixed, not fluid. Adolescents often appear to be “confused about their sexuality”, but OSC should know better than to assume that just because they’re still (in many ways) children, that means they’re not real people and don’t have real feelings. (See the introduction to the second edition of Ender’s Game where the author writes about this very issue.)

Those who claim that there is “no danger” and that homosexuals are born, not made, are simply stating their faith.

Ahem. And just what do you think you’re doing in this essay, Orson? Yes, that’s right: stating your faith. Damn right there’s “no danger”: being able to be open about your sexuality, whether gay, bi, or straight, is not a danger – unless other people (bullies, bigots) make it so.

The dark secret of homosexual society — the one that dares not speak its name — is how many homosexuals first entered into that world through a disturbing seduction or rape or molestation or abuse, and how many of them yearn to get out of the homosexual community and live normally.

Again, dangerous nonsense. Yes, rape, molestation, and abuse are far more common than is ever admitted. But no, as OSC would discover if he had any gay friends (I’m pretty much convinced that he was lying in Part 3) he would know that even if a boy is raped in adolescence by an older man, this won’t “turn him gay”. There have been revelations in the American media in the past few years about the many, many children who were molested by Catholic priests. Of those who have come out about child sexual abuse, there are some who now identify as gay – but even more who now identify as straight. Unless OSC has had his head under a pillow and his fingers stuck in his ears, he knows this: he’s just repeating a pernicious lie to make his argument, that growing up gay isn’t a natural development, to be supported like any other, but the result of interference.

It’s that desire for normality, that discontent with perpetual adolescent sexuality, that is at least partly behind this hunger for homosexual “marriage.”

Well, yes. As the author of Speaker for the Dead pointed out, marriage is, in many cultures, the key means of becoming a full adult member of the community. What OSC is carefully ignoring is that there are sound legal reasons for wanting to get married, quite apart from the emotional feeling that in marriage you, your partner, and your relationship, are accepted and respected by the community.

They are unhappy, but they think it’s because the rest of us “don’t fully accept them.”

What a wild, bizarre hypothesis! (end sarcasm) And further, phrased so as to discredit that feeling that “the rest of us don’t fully accept them” – even though OSC’s entire essay has been intended to make the point that whatever “the rest of us” might feel, he himself absolutely does not, and does not want to, fully accept same-sex couples. He believes (see Part 3) that same-sex couples who want to be married are just “playing dress-up”. What else is this but a settled refusal to accept gay people?

Homosexual “marriage” won’t accomplish what they hope. They will still be just as far outside the reproductive cycle of life. And they will have inflicted real damage on those of us who are inside it.

A triple lie. First, same-sex marriage will accomplish what we hope: (1) access to the same legal rights as mixed-sex marriage, and (2) acceptance of same-sex couples as part of normal life. And furthermore, OSC thinks so too: he keeps “warning” his readers about both (1) and (2), throughout this entire essay of his, as an inevitable result of same-sex marriage. Second, what OSC is setting up as a straw doll is the double (and doubly false) belief that what same-sex couples want is to engender children: and that being homosexual is exactly the same as being sterile. Third, OSC asserts that access to marriage by same-sex couples will somehow damage marriage for those who already have access to it.

They will make it harder for us to raise children with any confidence that they, in turn, will take their place in the reproductive cycle. They will use all the forces of our society to try to encourage our children that it is desirable to be like them.

OSC is here claiming his second lie as evidence for his third lie, a curiously circular effect.

Most kids won’t be swayed, because the message of the hormones is clear for them. But for those parents who have kids who hover in confusion, their lives complicated by painful experiences, conflicting desires, and many fears, the P.C. elite will now demand that the full machinery of the state be employed to draw them away from the cycle of life.

Again, lies being used to prove a lie. Being lesbian or gay (or bisexual) is not identical with sterility. Being bisexual, lesbian, or gay is not identical with “confusion”, is not caused by “painful experiences”. Yes, growing up lesbian, gay, or bisexual can mean that an adolescent suffers more from ignorance and confusion about their desires (the message of the hormones is always clear, but doesn’t come supplied with a Powerpoint display to explain it!) and the lack of information, or outright bigotry, is certainly a cause of more fears. What’s the solution?

Prevent bullying. Provide positive role-models. Yet earlier in this essay, OSC has been vehemently against positive role-models, and only mildly against bullying (indeed, he’s said nothing at all against bullying forcing children into unwanted heterosexuality).

And again, again, as many times as it has to be said: sterility and homosexuality are not identical. Gay people can, and do, have children. The full machinery of the state has indeed been employed to draw us away from the cycle of life – but not by the “P.C. Elite” – by laws that powerfully discriminated against illegitimate children, laws that OSC says earlier he supports and thinks ought to be brought back.

Children from broken and wounded families, with missing parents, may be the ones most confused and most susceptible.

Indeed – but OSC isn’t admitting either of two things. One, that children from dysfunctional families may be confused/susceptible in many directions. He claims he’s worried about straight/bisexual children being convinced they’re gay: but he shows no sign of being concerned for lesbigay children being convinced they’re straight, though this is statistically much more likely. The second thing he’s not admitting is the simple fact that the majority of gay people grew up, like most children do, in families that correspond to OSC’s rigid definition of family: Dad. Mom. Kids. There is no statistical correlation between gayness and divorced parents.

Instead of society helping these children overcome the handicaps that come from a missing or dysfunctional father or mother, it may well be exacerbating the damage.

Damage can be caused in a lot of ways. But one cause of damage is forcing someone into a mold where they don’t fit: making an adolescent (or anyone) lie about what they really feel in order to fit in. Yet this is what OSC is advocating. (He’s also assuming that having only one parent is automatically a handicap/damaging. I just point that out.)

All the while, the P.C. elite will be shouting at dismayed parents that it is somehow evil and bigoted of them not to rejoice when their children commit themselves to a reproductive dead end.

One: what “P.C. elite”? Two: what reproductive dead end? Three: shouldn’t good parents rejoice if their children are happy? Evil parents who care more for their bigotry than their children’s happiness won’t rejoice if their children are happy in a way that offends their bigotry, but is OSC really claiming that only the “P.C. elite” love their children enough to rejoice that they’re happy?

But there is nothing irrational about parents grieving at the abduction-in-advance of their grandchildren.

…which could well become a self-fulfilling prophecy. But it’s absurd: as OSC knows (not being the uninformed idiot he seems to want to pretend to be), being gay isn’t the same as being sterile. (Indeed, given that his earlier argument was that gay people ought to marry in mixed-sex relationships in order to get the privileges of marriage and have children, he can’t even pretend to be an ignorant idiot who thinks gays are sterile: it’s self-contradictory.)

Don’t you see the absurd contradiction? A postulated but unproven genetic disposition toward homosexuality is supposed to be embraced and accepted by everyone as “perfectly natural” — but the far stronger and almost universal genetic disposition toward having children and grandchildren is to be suppressed, kept to yourself, treated as a mental illness.

I see an absurd contradiction here, but it’s not the one OSC is pointing out. He’s set up a dancing trio of straw men. One, he’s claiming that people who are attracted to the same-sex ought to marry people of the opposite sex in order to have children. Two, he’s pretending that only a genetic cause of homosexuality could make an attraction to people of the same sex “natural”. Three, he’s pretending at the same time that being exclusively attracted to the same sex makes it impossible for a person to have children. Oh, and four, making it a dancing quartet: he’s setting up the notion that being gay is the only reason why a son or daughter wouldn’t be presenting their parents with grandchildren.

You’re unhappy that your son wants to marry a boy? Then you’re sick, dangerous, a homophobe, filled with hate. Control your natural desires or be branded as evil by every movie and TV show coming out of P.C. Hollywood!

Note: Orson Scott Card’s own definition of homophobia: “someone with a pathological fear of homosexuality to the degree that it interferes with his life”. I would say that someone who is viciously and openly unhappy that his son wants to get married because his son wants to marry another man is indeed allowing a fear of homosexuality to interfere with his life: so by OSC’s own definition, this hypothetical parent is indeed a homophobe.) Oh, and, jesuswept, in what absurd universe is Hollywood regarded as too “Politically Correct”?

Compassion and tolerance flow only one way in the “Wonderland” of the politically correct.

Indeed: and evidently OSC thinks that compassion and tolerance are dubious things at best.

OSC claims to be pro-family

Loss of Trust The proponents of this anti-family revolution are counting on most Americans to do what they have done through every stage of the monstrous social revolution that we are still suffering through — nothing at all.

As I’ve already pointed out, the social revolution that OSC is complaining about isn’t an anti-family revolution. OSC is complaining about three things: that same-sex couples can get married, that there is no legal or social stigma any more against having “illegitimate” children, and that it’s easier now for someone in an unhappy marriage to get a divorce.

First: same-sex couples being able to get married in fact legitimises new families (OSC’s rigid definition of “family” as exclusively “Dad, Mom, and kids” is so utterly heartless that I do not believe that even he believes it). OSC takes the anti-family view that these new families should stay illegitimate.

Second, back in the bad old days, when there was a legal/social stigma against having “illegitimate” children, the reason why there were fewer one-parent families wasn’t because these children weren’t being born, it was because these children were being taken away from their mother and warehoused in institutions. Again, OSC takes the anti-family view that these days should return.

Third, divorce does end marriage: but the marriages it ends are the unhappy failed marriages, those that don’t make good families. OSC takes the basically anti-family view that it’s better for children to live in an unhappy family than for them to live in a happy one: and he takes no account of the fact that children can end up with an extended family.

The social revolution that OSC claims to have been “suffering through” has been pro-family, not anti-family. In each example that OSC has himself proposed, he has taken the anti-family course.

But that “nothing” is deceptive. In fact, the pro-family forces are already taking their most decisive action. It looks like “nothing” to the anti-family, politically correct elite, because it isn’t using their ranting methodology.

Ahem. Who uses “ranting methodology”? Are you under the impression, Orson, that this essay isn’t a rant? That the anti-family right-wingers who attack families that don’t fit the “Dad, Mom, and the kids” mould don’t rant about it?

The pro-family response consists of quietly withdrawing allegiance from the society that is attacking the family.

And I can assure you, OSC, that the familes whom you are attacking are undoubtedly withdrawing their allegience from you.

Would-be parents take part in civilization only when they trust society to enhance their chances of raising children who will, in turn, reproduce. Societies that create that trust survive; societies that lose it, disappear, one way or another.

I’ve been told that what OSC is ranting about in this essay, contradicting himself and telling lies in most unusual style, is basically direct from the handbook on marriage issued to Mormon bishops. If this anti-family attitude does represent Mormon thinking, then it would appear likely that the Mormons will disappear as a church as it becomes clear that they are, as a society, losing the trust of their members. Except that the Mormons were faced with a decision like this in 1890: continue with the practice of polygyny, and fail as a civilisation (Utah was not permitted statehood until 1894, I think, precisely because of polygyny) or give up their so-called “revelation” and succeed. The revelation was re-evalued: polygyny was officially abolished. Some Mormons still practice it, but they’re in a distinct minority, and pretty much have to live in the isolated patch of northwestern Arizona north of the Grand Canyon and south of the Utah border in order to steer clear of the law.

Similiarly, when the Mormon church was founded, the teaching of Brigham Young was that black people were cursed by God (I thought it was Joseph Smith’s teaching, but apparently Smith ordained a black man: it was Young who was most strongly racist). However, in 1978, after 20 years of pressure from the civil rights movement, the church had a brand-new revelation that declared it okay for blacks to have the priesthood. So when OSC declares his permanent opposition to gay marriage, he should bear in mind that his church is quite capable of changing doctrine if sufficient social pressure is brought to bear.

But the most common way is for the people who have the most at stake — parents and would-be parents — to simply make the untrusted society disappear by ceasing to lift a finger to sustain it.

Yes indeed. And though OSC doesn’t like to admit it, quite a lot of those parents and would-be parents exist outside his rigid definition of “family”. OSC is trying a fright campaign – claiming that these people are in a minority, that the “real” families are in the majority. But Mormon families have gay kids too, and while in the past the traditional solution has been for them either to get married and live unhappily ever after, or to run away to California or New York and join the gay rights movement, it may well be that Mormon families are beginning to wonder “Do I really have to lose my child forever, just because s/he’s gay?”

OSC is trying to claim that yes, yes, you do, there is no alternative – but the more open opportunities there are for lesbigay people to live openly without suffering discrimination, the more positive role models there are available to gay teenagers (and presumably this is why OSC is particularly scared of positive role models on TV) the more likely it is that gay children of Mormons will defy their parents and refuse to live unhappily ever after – and the more likely it is that their parents will refuse to shun their children just because they’re gay. OSC seems to fear that this may mean the end of the Mormon church: but he should have more confidence in the ability of Mormon prophets to receive conveniently-timed revelations that make it okay to change doctrine.

It is parents who have the greatest ability to transmit a culture from one generation to the next.

Yes: and again, OSC seems to be forgetting the number of parents who are indeed busily transmitting their pro-family culture, in contrast to OSC’s anti-family culture.

If parents stop transmitting the culture of the American elite to their children, and actively resist letting the schools and media do it in their place, then that culture will disappear.

Note the use of the word “elite”. It’s the fourth or fifth time he’s used it in this essay so far, and it’s a word with a specific meaning in US history: see under OSC makes false claims about the US legal system for further comments. But OSC may also be using it with the usual meaning of “a group that is or that sees itself as superior to others” in which case one can only say: Pot, kettle, black. OSC’s entire argument is based on the idea that as far as he’s concerned he belongs to a superior group.

If America becomes a place where the laws of the nation declare that marriage no longer exists — which is what the Massachusetts decision actually does

Again, just repeating the obvious: No, it doesn’t. The Massachusetts decision makes no change to marriage whatsoever: it merely grants same-sex couples right of access to marriage. Southern lunchcounters were not changed forever when black people got the right to sit down at them.

— then our allegiance to America will become zero. We will transfer our allegiance to a society that does protect marriage.

Again, stating the obvious: it is OSC who is attacking marriage: it is OSC who is claiming that “marriage no longer exists”, not the Massachusetts Supreme Court. He has not yet explained (and can’t, I suspect) how it is that Southern buses ceased to exist on 1st December 1955, and all reference to travel by bus in Southern US states after that date is purely your imagination. After all, according to OSC, equal access is identical with total destruction.

We will teach our children to have no loyalty to the culture of the American elite, and will instead teach them to be loyal to a competing culture that upholds the family. Whether we home school our kids or not, we will withdraw them at an early age from any sense of belonging to contemporary American culture.

I thought, initially, that this was a threat of revolution. But in fact, I think, it’s a recommendation for guerrilla warfare in the only territory that would work: inside children’s heads. If they can keep lesbigay children from seeing positive role models of adult queer people in popular culture, or even in their school textbooks, or at school, by depriving them of any access to any culture outside the Mormon church. The more widely spread – the more normal – same-sex relationships are in popular culture, the more strongly deprived Mormon children must be.

Apparently there are 4.9 million Mormons in the US. (cite) And those members tend to be concentrated in only a relatively small number of US states: Utah, Idaho, Arizona, Washington, Oregon, and Nevada have the highest percentage and the highest number of Mormons in the US. (California has the second-highest number of Mormons, but a large population in which Mormons are just another small minority.) The Mormon church is one of the richest religions in the world. But despite OSC’s claims, it is not possible that the Mormons could formally cecede from the US and create a new country: the Southern states couldn’t do it over a century ago, and they had practical financial reasons for wishing to and faced a much lesser military power.

We’re already far down that road. Already most parents regard schools — an institution of the state that most directly touches our children — as the enemy, even though we like and trust the individual teachers — because we perceive, correctly, that schools are being legally obligated to brainwash our children to despise the values that keep civilization alive.

This is nonsense – as I’ve said before – and is not borne out by people with recent experience of the US educational system. But it is suggestive of what the Mormon church might see as a possible weapon: control of the US public school system. A small number of vocal parents, in a public school already suffering from lack of funds, threatening to withdraw their children if the school doesn’t quit allowing positive role models of same-sex couples (what OSC calls “brainwashing”) could easily have a very nasty effect on US education. We’ve already seen how Georgia was compelled to stop teaching evolution because creationist parents didn’t like it.

And if marriage itself ceases to exist as a legally distinct social union with protection from the government, then why in the world should we trust that government enough to let it have authority over our children?

An “If A, then B” statement that is meaningless: no one is suggesting that marriage should cease to exist as a legally distinct social union with protection from the government. OSC is asserting that if a minority get equal access to this social union, it will cease to exist. But since this is the basis of OSC’s argument, the public school system he is threatening to withdraw all Mormon children from in fact (according to his argument) hasn’t existed since 1954, when a another court case gave a minority equal access.

OSC makes false claims about the US legal system

They Think They Have the Power. The politically correct elite think they have the power to make these changes, because they control the courts. They don’t have to consult the people, because the courts nowadays have usurped the power to make new law.

This is a nonsense piled on an absurdity piled on a lie. Regardless of how you define “politically correct” (I can think of several definitions in current use), it is a lie that the “politically correct” control the courts (indeed, the judges in the Massachusetts Supreme Court are rather conservative than otherwise). It is an absurdity to argue that “the people” are not consulted: patently, “the people”, on being consulted by mayors like Newsome, are voting with their feet for gay marriage. And it’s an utter nonsense to claim that the courts have usurped the power to make new law: first, because no new law is involved, and second, because the courts have, through custom older than the United States itself, always had the power to interpret existing law according their legal judgement. And that’s what’s happened in Masschusetts.

Democracy? What a joke. These people hate putting questions like this to a vote. Like any good totalitarians, they know what’s best for the people, and they’ll force it down our throats any way they can.

Democracy is rule by majority; in the US, explicitly, the legislative branch functions to prevent rule by majority vote denying rights to minorities. What OSC is dismissing here with such contumely is a principle that dates back to the founding of the US. What OSC is supporting is what the Federalists founders of the United States called “tyranny of the majority”: the Antifederalists feared “tyranny of the elite”, hence OSC’s repeated use of “the elite” to denote the people supporting the principle of the Massachusetts Supreme Court decision.

Note also that neither the Federalists nor the Antifederalists would have agreed with OSC (at least not in principle – they might have freaked out in an 18th-century sort of way about the idea of same-sex marriage). The Federalists are those OSC is calling “totalitarians”: they would have objected to his belief that majority rule ought to impose on minority rights. The Antifederalists would not have supported Bush’s anti-marriage amendment, because the Antifederalists wanted to limit the powers of the federal government: if Massachusetts decides to permit same-sex marriages, the Antifederalists would have objected to the federal government overruling them.

That’s what the Democratic filibuster in the Senate to block Bush’s judicial appointments is all about — to keep the anti-family values of the Massachusetts Supreme Court in control of our government.

As far as I can see, this is completely irrelevant to this discussion – I assume OSC has just tucked it in because it’s something Republicans in his audience are sure to nod agreement over. I don’t want to explain in detail how OSC is lying about this, because it’s not really relevant and because American readers have probably had it up to here, but if you’re not American and you’re interested in finding out what OSC is yapping about, check out here and here for some relevant discussions.

And when you add this insult onto the already deep injuries to marriage caused by the widespread acceptance of nonmonogamous behavior, will there be anything left at all?

Since OSC has yet to prove that there have been any injuries to marriage due to “widespread acceptance of nonmonogamous behaviour”, nor can he really claim that blocking ultraconservative judges is an “insult to marriage”, I’ll take this paragraph as a random sulk in all directions.

Sure. In my church and many other churches, people still cling fiercely to civilized values and struggle to raise civilized children despite the barbarians who now rule us through the courts.

Incidentallly, just in case you didn’t know, in making the claim that refusal to accept same-sex marriage is the essence of civilised behaviour, OSC is calling all Jews (except the ultra-Orthodox), most Anglicans, and most Quakers barbarians. Just off the top of my head, those are three religions which do accept same-sex marriage, and are presumably therefore barbaric.

The barbarians think that if they grab hold of the trunk of the tree, they’ve caught the birds in the branches. But the birds can fly to another tree.

I think I speak for us all when I say “Huh?”

And I don’t mean that civilized Americans will move. I mean that they’ll simply stop regarding the authority of the government as having any legitimacy.

I blinked a bit when I saw that. Effectively, OSC is claiming that if same-sex marriage is accepted legally, he and other Mormon families will declare themselves in a state of rebellion against the US. The last time this was tried in the US was 1861. The rebels lost.

It is the most morally conservative portion of society that is most successful in raising children who believe in loyalty and oath-keeping and self-control and self-sacrifice.

An interesting assertion. Does George W. Bush fall into that category? Does Dick Cheney? Jerry Falwell? Ann Coulter? Pat Robertson? Clarence Thomas? Paul Wolfowitz?

And we’re tired of being subject to barbarian rules and laws that fight against our civilized values. We’re not interested in risking our children’s lives to defend a nation that does not defend us. Who do you think is volunteering for the military to defend America against our enemies? Those who believe in the teachings of politically correct college professors? Or those who believe in the traditional values that the politically correct elite has been so successful in destroying?

Well, certainly not any of the chickenhawks whose names I listed above. None of them have served in the military – well, okay, George W. Bush apparently volunteered to defend the State of Texas against its enemies, if that counts.

Let’s take a poll of our volunteer military — especially those who specialize in combat areas — and see what civilization it is that they actually volunteered to defend.

That would certainly be interesting. I think the results might well disappoint OSC.

Since the politically correct are loudly unwilling to fight or die for their version of America, and they are actively trying to destroy the version of America that traditional Americans are willing to fight or die to defend, just how long will “America” last, once they’ve driven out the traditional culture?

This really is a nasty twist. The US is one of the last remaining countries in Western civilisation that doesn’t permit gays to serve openly in the military. OSC is claiming that the “politically correct” don’t want to serve in the military – that only “traditional Americans” do. And by his own logic he must include all gays who want equal rights in his category of “the politically correct”. So OSC is effectively blaming the victims for the outdated military law that forbids open lesbigays from serving. A strikingly unfair argument.

Oh, it will still be called America. But out of the old American mantras of “democracy” and “freedom” and “home” and “family,” of “motherhood” and “apple pie,” only the pie will be left.

Given that OSC has been arguing throughout this essay against the principles by which the democracy of the US was founded, against freedom, against home and family, against motherhood, I find it slightly ironic that he’s claiming that if his opponents win, there won’t be anything left but apple pie.

And even if few people care enough to defend the old family values against the screaming hate speech of the Left — which is what they’re counting on, of course — the end will be the same. Because with marriage finally killed, America will no longer be able to raise up children with any trust in or loyalty to or willingness to sacrifice for that society.

[Edit: Later today someone posted a link to this story, which is a direct rebuttal of OSC's poisonous claims that gay people who want to be treated equally won't risk their lives for others. Francis Coppola: "Though his life has taken jagged and unexpected turns, his theme remains consistent. He's just like everyone else, and that's how he wants to be treated. Tomorrow he will testify for three minutes before the legislature's Judiciary Committee in favor of civil unions between partners of the same sex."]

The so-called “family values” that OSC has been defending in this screaming hate speech of his (honestly, any time he mentions the Left I feel like going “I know you are, but what am I?”) are not particularly old, and (as I’ve already noted) are rather more anti-family than pro-family.

And again, the only person who appears to want marriage dead is OSC himself – but perhaps he should take a look at the US public school system (still there) and the Montgomery buses (still there) and reflect that equal access really isn’t the same thing as total destruction. Further, while OSC is wildly flailing and blaming gays for being banned from service in the military, he himself has just put forward (earlier in this section of his essay) a proposal that he and his fellow Mormons should set out to raise children without “any trust in or loyalty to or willingness to sacrifice for that society”. So effectively he’s complaining that his opponents might do what he’s said he’s going to do.

So either civilized people will succeed in establishing a government that protects the family; or civilized people will withdraw their allegiance from the government that won’t protect it; or the politically correct barbarians will have complete victory over the family — and, lacking the strong family structure on which civilization depends, our civilization will collapse or fade away.

Huh. Okay: civilised people have already succeeded in establishing a government that protects families – as pointed out earlier, the single-parent families OSC is complaining about and saying are mere “groupings of people” are in fact the best alternative to institutionalised children. And if same-sex marriage becomes legal in the US, then still more families will be protected by it.

It’s true that Bush & Co’s government is strongly anti-family, but in the US civilised people can demonstrate their lack of allegience to a government that won’t protect them by voting in a new one every four years. Yet in all this, all OSC sees is that the family of “Dad, Mom, and the kids” is no longer being regarded as the only possible way to live, and claims that this means civilisation is about to fall.

Since I started writing this rebuttal to his essay, I’ve learned that far from being an uninformed eejit who knows only the way things are in his own country and believes them to be the laws of nature, OSC has a degree in social anthropology from a respected American university. So he knows that families take many forms in many civilisations – yet it’s necessary for his argument to pretend that he doesn’t know, that he honestly thinks that a 1950s American soap would be the only possible lifestyle for long-term civilisation.

Remember how long Iraq’s powerful military lasted against a determined enemy, when the Iraqi soldiers no longer had any loyalty to the Iraqi leadership. That wasn’t an aberration. It’s how great nations and empires fall.

Oh, for heaven’s sake. It might also have had something to do with the tiny fact that Iraq didn’t have a “powerful military” – and it was faced with the most powerful military force on the planet. Technological superiority wins wars. As we’ve known now for months, Iraq’s army for the most part simply faded – realised they couldn’t win against the US army, and disappeared into the rubble to reappear (apparently) as guerrillas fighting the kind of war where technological superiority has not nearly such an advantage.

Depriving us of any democratic voice in these sweeping changes may not lead to revolution or even resistance.

Hmmm. See the history of the civil rights movement. Revolution no, resistance yes.

But it will be just as deadly if it leads to despair. For in the crisis, few citizens will lift a finger to protect or sustain the elite that treated the things we valued — our marriages, our children, and our right to self-government — with such contempt.

OSC makes this claim with apparently blithe ignorance of the number of gays kicked out of the US military: about a thousand each year, and the number is rising steadily. It seems unlikely that every gay person who joins the military is being discovered and given the boot. Gay marriages, gay children and the children of gays, gay participation in democracy – all have been treated with contempt by the US government and by state governments, up until very recently. So when OSC claims that citizens treated with contempt won’t risk joining the military, the facts, once again, prove him wrong. (Indeed, President Harry S Truman could have told him differently… black people did join the US military even before the civil rights movement – even before the military was desegregated.)

So when OSC claims that his group won’t join the military if they think they’re being treated with contempt, he’s claiming that his group (Mormons/Christian conservatives) is more vindictive and less public-spirited than either black people before the civil rights movement or gay people now. Further, he’s claiming that giving a minority group that OSC despises (and that he claims many others also despise) access to equal rights with the majority is an act of contempt. He claimed too this about his imaginary gay friends wanting to get married, and there is the same answer to his claim: Yes, it shows contempt. It shows a failure of respect towards OSC’s bigotry towards gay people. But what made him believe that his bigotry is deserving of respect?

This should be the end of the story, but in fact there’s a follow-up, which I hope to go into. But tomorrow I’m taking the night off. I might even bake scones.

To part 5.

- More blogging by Yonmei at http://yonmei.insanejournal.com

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