Get over it, Orson
Via pretty much everywhere on the sf grapevine comes news that Orson Scott Card is being a reactionary ass-hat again, writing a column for the Mormon Times that states - yes, states, not infers - that same-sex marriage “marks the end of democracy in America”.
WTF?
I guess I’m just lucky to have been raised by parents who taught me to value people by their actions and character rather than their gender, skin colour or sexual preference, but I just don’t understand this attitude. I mean it really makes no sense to me. Why does Card care? Really? How does gay marriage harm him, or anyone else? How does it undermine democracy?
Card’s not a homophobe, though - or so he’d have us believe. I think I’ll leave it to Yonmei at the Feminist SF blog to shred that claim:
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.
To be honest, I’d probably respect his position a fragment more if he just admitted to being disgusted and intimidated by homosexuality; it’s the pious hand-wringing tone that offends the worst.
But I’d still think that - regardless of how well-loved some of his novels have been - he needs to pull his head out of his arse and learn to live and let live. For a man who has written a lot about the future, he seems particularly keen on living in the past. [image by crichton91]
