Card’s homophobia is pretty standard Mormon homophobia. I was gonna bring this up in my post (why hate on Card specifically… why not boycott the artistic output of all Mormons to punish them for their views) but I thought it might be in poor taste. Not all Mormons think like Card does. (but to be honest I haven’t met any who don’t…)
At least you recognize they exist, even if you haven’t met them. That’s a start.
He’s on the board of directors of the National Organization for Marriage, a homophobic hate group. Do you have any more nits to pick or has your computer finally gotten connected to Google?
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Obviously the way to earn gay rights is for the queers to be less uppity.
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Card has campaigned to limit the rights of certain kinds of people and even said revolution would be acceptable to do so. Now that may be a religious belief, just as not eating pork is someone else’s religious belief; but that similarity of form does not make the content the same, or mean we need to treat them the same. That is false equivalence taken to an extreme. Trying to harm people is not just another belief.
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Which other authors are currently occupying leadership positions in high profile hate groups? Please provide a list or I’m going to set your straw man on fire.
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I try very hard to teach my kids that disliking an individual is fine, but applying that dislike to a class of people is unacceptable. That’s why we as individuals are at liberty to dislike OSC as an individual for his bigotry and close-mindedness.
However, when we start throwing around the idea that “All Mormons are homophobes and thus are rightly punished” or “All people involved with a cinematic release of a story by an admitted homophobe are homophobes and are rightly punished”, we fall into the very same prejudicial trap as your standard homophobe.
Go ahead and call OSC on the phone and tell him you are ashamed of him as a human. Go ahead and chose not to watch the movie because you found the book unappealing. Those are actions based on evaluating the subject on its merits. Don’t allow yourself to generalize and discard an entire class or faith or company of people just because you know one bad actor.
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I was a weird kid who read a lot of science fiction and inevitably I ended up reading Ender’s Game. I’m really conflicted on seeing the movie because I love science fiction epics and space battles and Harrison Ford. But I’m also queer as can be and I find Card’s words and actions loathsome. I have not bought any of the Dragon Age comics, even though I adore that universe, because Card wrote for them. I haven’t found my personal balance in dealing with art I enjoy being made by people who actively despise me.
I think ultimately I won’t go, because I try my hardest not to give money to artists/restaraunts/stores/other money accepting places/people who are homophobes.
The only thing I can do at this point is write really gay fanfiction. I’ll admit that it is partly out of my own desire and partly because I know it would irritate the hell out of Card. (I’m really counting on the Tumblr crowd to bring on the fanfic)
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I know at least thirty mormons, and every one of them are just as despicable about this issue as Card is. How many should I know who are supporters of hate groups before I CAN cast the entire theology with the broader brush? The church directly finances the National Organization for Marriage. They directly paid for Prop8. They were involved in sending people to Uganda to campaign for gays to be put to death. DIRECTLY. INVOLVED.
I’m just curious how many I need to have before I can say that it’s MORE than just one person?
Edit: This was in response to Ion saying Card believes he is making the world a better place; it maybe makes no sense now.
If you look at what Card has said about homosexuality, I don’t think you would see that lack of malice. But even if it were true, he would still be wrong, the same as everyone else who would like to hurt minorities for their perceived greater good. Indeed there are few atrocities where some people could not offer that as a defense, and judging from how you have spoken about groups like the Taliban, you’d think you would understand that it does not excuse them.
Tolerance does not mean accepting intolerance. Card is part of an organization that, as part of their view of how to best organize society, has done things like support the execution of gays in Uganda. That is not the same as simply showing whatever religious affiliation, and trying to pretend this is a question of religious discrimination instead of one about hate groups is dishonest.
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Funnily enough, the Church’s stance on gay issues has moved demonstrably toward acceptance (edit - well, maybe acceptance is a bit optimistic, but engagement) just in the last few months. They still have a long way to go, but the leadership seems to be quite serious about rapprochement. This, of course, will lead to a class of ultra-Mormons, like Mel Gibson who’s Catholic but thinks that the Vatican is way too left-wing. Not that that’s new for the Mormons; they have a long history of ultra-crazy splinter groups.
How many do you need to know that do not fit your prejudice for you to discard it? One? at least thirty?
I’d say at least 1:1 or 2:1. And they’d all have to be vocally not cultlike.
I think that for a while his writing was a safe space where his imagination could roam without being constrained by his dogma. Sadly, it seems that dogma gradually encroached there too.
There’s a lot of good artists whose personal opinions I’ve found reprehensible - if this wasn’t the case, I probably couldn’t enjoy any art, painting or music made before 1940. But in a modern age with access to information and a freer society, there really isn’t reason to be the kind of asshole Card’s become. Or, actually, there’s one reason: ego. He just can’t accept the logic and facts that his personal opinions are not only emotionally based, but wrong.
So, probably won’t see it either. It’s a shame, because “Ender’s Game” is such a really, really good book.
Schockmercenary. The author has not weighed in for or against publicly-- seeing as how he writes a comic that is not about Card, Card’s books, or current news items. I wrote in and privately asked and was privately answered that they do not agree with Card’s views. It’s a rocking webcomic but it would have been difficult to continue enjoying it if I thought that meeting the author in person to thank him for his work would lead to them telling me I would go to hell.
I read the trilogy and thought they were kind of sophomoric nerd wish fulfillment. I didn’t totally regret the time spent on them but I probably could have spent it better. Having learned in later years about his personal opinions, I wouldn’t give him the time of day, let alone my cash.
Brandon Sanderson (another Mormon writer, perhaps better known than Howard Tayler, who makes Schlock Mercenary) wrote on his website in 2011 that he had recently changed his opinion on gay marriage. Apparently he thinks that the the legal aspects and the religious aspects of marriage should be separated, so that churches can marry whoever they feel like, but without infringing on the rights of homosexual couples who deserve things like hospital visitation rights, and shared insurance. He’s still iffy on homosexuality as a thing, because he’s still Mormon and that’s part of the belief package, but he doesn’t want that belief of his to cause harm to others. A religion should only have authority over its adherents. It’s not perfect, but it’s a lot more open-minded and respectful than Card’s viewpoint.
Religious people are figuring it out slowly. Mormons are pretty socially conservative, but they’ll collectively come around eventually. They might never be “ok” with it (the same way most religions aren’t “ok” with extramarital sex), but most of them will eventually be respectful of others’ rights. The problem now, in my opinion, is that religious people don’t know (or don’t think they know) any homosexual people, so they’re relying almost entirely on hearsay from pastors and friends to form their opinions of gay people. If a family member or a friend who they knew well came out and that friend wasn’t like the stereotypes, they’d probably change their tune. I know I did.
Brandon Sanderson seems to be coming at marriage from a perspective I’ve seen before that starts with an insulting premise. There are a group of people who have this idea to make marriage a religion-only thing and then have the government/legal stuff be called a civil union. In their minds this makes perfect sense. To them, they were married in a church, temple, mosque, etc.
To them, marriage is intricately tied to their religion and they can’t conceive that a couple would get married by a justice of the peace or by a guy dressed as Elvis. Or if they do consider those situations, they think that those people would be perfectly happy saying they’re in a civil union rather than a marriage. What they’re saying when they want to make this “compromise” is that when someone gets married at city hall, that wasn’t a real marriage, that was just a civil union.
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Somebody, either a Catholic or an Anglican panjandrum, suggested that the Church start calling what they do Holy Matrimony (which is what they’re supposed to call it anyway), rather than fight against gay people getting married.
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