Goodbye Mr Card

Orson Scott Card is one of science fiction's biggest names. His novel, Ender's Game is frankly seminal, a marvellous novel of growing up and war. However, that was a while ago and nowadays, his reputation is a lot worse. His support for right-wing causes has coloured his writing to the tune that Empire, one of his most recent novels, is renown for it's tea-party level excesses. But what's really made him unpopular is his opposition to gay marriage. Still there are a lot of reasons why he might oppose gay marriage, even if I can't think of any sane reasons to oppose it. Then I found this online:

The hypocrites of homosexuality are, of course, already preparing to answer these statements by accusing me of homophobia, gay-bashing, bigotry, intolerance; but nothing that I have said here -- and nothing that has been said by any of the prophets or any of the Church leaders who have dealt with this issue -- can be construed as advocating, encouraging, or even allowing harsh personal treatment of individuals who are unable to resist the temptation to have sexual relations with persons of the same sex. On the contrary, the teachings of the Lord are clear in regard to the way we must deal with sinners. Christ treated them with compassion -- as long as they confessed that their sin was a sin. Only when they attempted to pretend that their sin was righteousness did he harshly name them for what they were: fools, hypocrites, sinners. Hypocrites because they were unwilling to change their behavior and instead attempted to change the law to fit it; fools because they thought that deceiving an easily deceivable society would achieve the impossible goal of also deceiving God.

Basically, it's Card describing his opinions on homosexuality, with respect to his Mormon religion. It's a little distasteful. Firstly, Card consistently treats being gay as a 'phase'. He directly and frequently compares it to childhood experimentation. Indeed so attached is he to this metaphor that he effectively advocates the treatment of homosexuals as children, with their 'punishment' intended to correct behavioral issues rather than punish. This single memetic concept is so incredibly offensive as to be astounding. He is basically saying that every single Gay, Lesbian and Bi person who's ever lived was immature and irresponsible. He is ignoring every person who's ever had to stand up and say 'I am not straight, I cannot take pretending to be so any more', despite the cost in family and friendship. Worse, he's effectively laid the blame on the head of every victim of a gay-bashing ever, as he implies that everything is the fault of the gay person, as they should be able to restrain their sexuality.

In a sane world, the Mormon church would be embarrassed by this, though their Prop Eight support will tell you that in this world, they're not. Card frequently and often establishes that being gay is impossible within the Mormon church, that the only way to be exist in the church is to knuckle down, admit your sin and pretend that you're straight. This is the kind of dialogue that gives the Church of Latter Day Saints such a bad name. Effectively, Card states, to be Mormon is to be anti-gay, because the words of their prophets say so. It's the kind of fundamentalist absolutionism that gives religion a bad name.

To be blunt, by writing this op-ed, Card's cheerfully thrown away his credibility. It's an authoritarian nightmare advocating for the arrest of practicing homosexuals by an author who clearly has no real clue what gay life is like. He equates gay rights with tyranny and seems to believe that his church has the right to dictate someone's sex life. I'm straight and I still find that incredibly offensive