The Subtext of Orson Scott Card
So in my tradition of arguments with a certain vocal person on the internet, I've decided to post my argument on here, rather than take them up on how wrong they are, so that I can have it to show to people should the need arise, but not to take them up on their antagonistic views directly. This person gets themselves into a fit of accusatory and frankly impolite hijackings of facebook posts that they believe aren't in tune with their frame of mind. I may not agree with their position, but using their ability to intercede into any conversation held on a forum like facebook is a breach of some of the most basic internet protocol. It seems a bit passive aggressive not to confront them in public. I've come to the conclusion that having the argument in that media, where their same lack of discipline applies, would be at best a lost cause, at worst turned on myself for the many other things that we disagree on, and made personal. So...I console myself at just being right, and providing my justification here.
The subject of my friend's wrath was the emergence of the new movie, Ender's Game, based on the 1984 Novel by Orson Scott Card. She, as many other supporters of the GBLT (etc) community, advocated a boycott of this movie so that the author gained no support either by the proceeds of the movie, or if he was not receiving any proceeds from the movie sales, not providing impetus for his further books to be purchased for the purpose of film.
I love Enders Game. I read it over and over in my childhood, and at a time when I considered myself someone one who would have benefitted from a school like that...where politics were entirely derived from your ability to get along or lead, and otherwise by your ability to preform specific tasks set in an entirely unfamilliar environment with low precedent for what constitutes a pass or fail other than your general success at the task that you are given. My reading of the book was that in this environment, history, gender, and cultural standing accounted for little other than the attitude with which you regarded yourself. I even read some of Ender's associations with his comrades to be pro-gay, as far as my youthful mind can remember. I suppose that's just from a connotative reading, not from anything specific he did. But at the very least, there were no anti-gay messages in the book. They were far more involved with other things, like the survival of the human race...
Because of my love of the book, and that early reading of it, I was understandably distraught to find out that OSC was a homophobic person. I was even more upset to see my friend's accusation that he advocated VIOLENCE towards the GBLT (etc) community. I was torn because on the one hand, I love the book, and had been greatly looking forward to the movie, but on the other I did not want to support anything that has to do with hate-crime towards anyone, particularly the group that I am a part of. I made the decision (to my partner...who is a bit more of an activist than I am) that I was going to see the movie. She said she wouldn't stop me, or hate on me for it. That's a good thing at least. It was only the latest rush by my friend on a person's attempt to organise a viewing of the movie at the cinema which spawned a brief stint of research. Surely to provoke such strong opinions, OSC must have done something horrible? In which case, I should possibly reconsider my decision to watch the movie anyway.
So the first step was to plug "Orson Scott Card Homophobia" into google, to see if there was something obvious that he had done in recent years which had spawned horror on the internet. The results were all political. Gay-friendly groups were encouraging people to boycott the film of a homophobe who disapproved of gay marriage to the point of government takeover. Right. But I couldn't see any blatant floggings or KKK involvements.
The Wikipedia article was the next step. It shows political activism, public denouncing of making gay marriage legal, and of public acceptance of homosexuality. He joined a political lobby group which threw money at judges that were presiding over cases that were contributing towards there being a case for gay marriage. People are entitled to their opinion, and to speak it freely. What I was looking for was any case of Card, or the lobby group he joined, illegally or violently taking things into their own hands. Looking at the activity of the group, it looks like they largely devoted their attentions to the democatic process of the judges making these decisions, and that the decisions were based on their own moral judgement, rather than the feelings of the greater nation. They threw a lot of money at passing anti-gay legislation. That's also their right, to put their strength behind a legal process. The process isn't perfect, but they were fighting it within the system. There was nothing illegal about what they were doing.
Right, back to Card himself. The wikipedia article mentioned several essays that Card published which demonstrated his view. One in 2004. One in 2008.
The 2004 article again begins with it's focus on the judicial system that is leading up to the normalisation of gay marriage, similar to the target of the political lobby group in which Card was involved. Regardless of their opinion of homosexual "marriage," every American who believes in democracy should be outraged that any court should take it upon itself to dictate such a social innovation without recourse to democratic process.
...
Supporters of homosexual "marriage" dismiss warnings like mine as the predictable ranting of people who hate progress. But the Massachusetts Supreme Court has made its decision without even a cursory attempt to ascertain the social costs. The judges have taken it on faith that it will do no harm.
You can't add a runway to an airport in America without years of carefully researched environmental impact statements. But you can radically reorder the fundamental social unit of society without political process or serious research.
Let me put it another way. The sex life of the people around me is none of my business; the homosexuality of some of my friends and associates has made no barrier between us, and as far as I know, my heterosexuality hasn't bothered them. That's what tolerance looks like.
Far be it for me to say that Card wasn't homophobic, or approved of homosexuality. Clearly that's not the case. Regardless of this, his major beef seems not to be with the existence of long term homosexuality, but rather the use of the word "marriage" for homosexual unions, equating them to a heterosexual marriage. Card's argument seems to be that a heterosexual marriage forms itself on the idea of giving a male and female rolemodel to the offspring of their union, thus giving them insight into the male and female roles that they play in society and in the family. At no point in the article does Card say that this could not be done by a homosexual couple. He does seem to indicate, however, that children that grow up with a male and female role model are more likely to be balanced (Card says in his response to the criticism below that he has sources, but as with any subject with any sort of political sensitivity, there will be sources on either side of the argument with equally convincing proof).
...
Another issue on Card's agenda is "labelling", which is something that I have issues with myself, even if it is from the other part of the argument.
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?
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.
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.
In other words, society will bend all its efforts to seize upon any hint of homosexuality in our young people and encourage it.
I actually think this is already a problem in society, and that he nailed it on the head. With the emphasis on extending the GBLT anagram into something with increasingly more letters, there's clearly a desperate need for this kind of labelling, even though there is common place acknowledgement amongst the community that the scale of GLBT is rational rather than natural.
...
That's not saying that I agree with every part of the article. There are parts that clearly show a lack of knowledge about the growth of a GLBT individual and resort to sensationalism.
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.
It's that desire for normality, that discontent with perpetual adolescent sexuality, that is at least partly behind this hunger for homosexual "marriage."
...
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.
He also does not address the legal side effects of having no defined gay "marriage", or propose an alternative to "marriage" for the rights that a spouse has upon the death or incapacitation of their loved one, which would have leant his article to be more constructive, rather than an attack.
So, having read the 2004 article in it's entirety, I think I can safely be comfortable not Boycotting the Enders Game movie. In fact I have more respect for the author (despite his eccentricities through the article, and especially at the conclusion). He is simply a man on the other side of the argument from me, taking a fairly activist stance. So what about the 2008?
Reading through it, I don't see much new in the 2008 article. And I believe the 2004 is better written. I thought for a moment that he was going to address the idea of property from a homosexual union's point of view.
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.
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.
But he did not take the idea to it's next logical conclusion - suggesting that law would be more suited to giving a new definition to a homosexual coupling which granted rights to their chosen partner beyond power of attorney.
I think this next paragraph worth mentioning:
This is a term that was invented to describe people with a pathological fear of homosexuals - the kind of people who engage in acts of violence against gays. But the term was immediately extended to apply to anyone who opposed the homosexual activist agenda in any way.
A term that has mental-health implications (homophobe) is now routinely applied to anyone who deviates from the politically correct line. How long before opposing gay marriage, or refusing to recognize it, gets you officially classified as "mentally ill"?
Again, Card is taking offence to terminology and labelling, which as an author, he is quite qualified to do. You can see hints here of a 1984 style America - where language and the propaganda mill are entirely in control of what children and the public think of an individual of idea. Other than that, Card's 2nd article has done nothing but get a bit more extreme in his views, a little more disorganised in his ideas.
**
Based on these two articles, I can safely say that I feel comfortable watching Ender's Game, regardless of whether or no there are homophobic connotations to this work, created well before the hayday of political activity centred on gay marriage and the acceptance of homosexuality into normality (which, as I said in my introduction, I highly doubt). Card himself has recently issued a statement:
Ender’s Game is set more than a century in the future and has nothing to do with political issues that did not exist when the book was written in 1984.
With the recent Supreme Court ruling, the gay marriage issue becomes moot. The Full Faith and Credit clause of the Constitution will, sooner or later, give legal force in every state to any marriage contract recognized by any other state.
Now it will be interesting to see whether the victorious proponents of gay marriage will show tolerance toward those who disagreed with them when the issue was still in dispute.
Card has said that because the situation has been resolved, he will no longer go against gay marriage. Because it's law. It's done. He lost the argument. He's moving on. That's what most reasonable men would do. Shouldn't we do the same?
The subject of my friend's wrath was the emergence of the new movie, Ender's Game, based on the 1984 Novel by Orson Scott Card. She, as many other supporters of the GBLT (etc) community, advocated a boycott of this movie so that the author gained no support either by the proceeds of the movie, or if he was not receiving any proceeds from the movie sales, not providing impetus for his further books to be purchased for the purpose of film.
I love Enders Game. I read it over and over in my childhood, and at a time when I considered myself someone one who would have benefitted from a school like that...where politics were entirely derived from your ability to get along or lead, and otherwise by your ability to preform specific tasks set in an entirely unfamilliar environment with low precedent for what constitutes a pass or fail other than your general success at the task that you are given. My reading of the book was that in this environment, history, gender, and cultural standing accounted for little other than the attitude with which you regarded yourself. I even read some of Ender's associations with his comrades to be pro-gay, as far as my youthful mind can remember. I suppose that's just from a connotative reading, not from anything specific he did. But at the very least, there were no anti-gay messages in the book. They were far more involved with other things, like the survival of the human race...
Because of my love of the book, and that early reading of it, I was understandably distraught to find out that OSC was a homophobic person. I was even more upset to see my friend's accusation that he advocated VIOLENCE towards the GBLT (etc) community. I was torn because on the one hand, I love the book, and had been greatly looking forward to the movie, but on the other I did not want to support anything that has to do with hate-crime towards anyone, particularly the group that I am a part of. I made the decision (to my partner...who is a bit more of an activist than I am) that I was going to see the movie. She said she wouldn't stop me, or hate on me for it. That's a good thing at least. It was only the latest rush by my friend on a person's attempt to organise a viewing of the movie at the cinema which spawned a brief stint of research. Surely to provoke such strong opinions, OSC must have done something horrible? In which case, I should possibly reconsider my decision to watch the movie anyway.
So the first step was to plug "Orson Scott Card Homophobia" into google, to see if there was something obvious that he had done in recent years which had spawned horror on the internet. The results were all political. Gay-friendly groups were encouraging people to boycott the film of a homophobe who disapproved of gay marriage to the point of government takeover. Right. But I couldn't see any blatant floggings or KKK involvements.
The Wikipedia article was the next step. It shows political activism, public denouncing of making gay marriage legal, and of public acceptance of homosexuality. He joined a political lobby group which threw money at judges that were presiding over cases that were contributing towards there being a case for gay marriage. People are entitled to their opinion, and to speak it freely. What I was looking for was any case of Card, or the lobby group he joined, illegally or violently taking things into their own hands. Looking at the activity of the group, it looks like they largely devoted their attentions to the democatic process of the judges making these decisions, and that the decisions were based on their own moral judgement, rather than the feelings of the greater nation. They threw a lot of money at passing anti-gay legislation. That's also their right, to put their strength behind a legal process. The process isn't perfect, but they were fighting it within the system. There was nothing illegal about what they were doing.
Right, back to Card himself. The wikipedia article mentioned several essays that Card published which demonstrated his view. One in 2004. One in 2008.
The 2004 article again begins with it's focus on the judicial system that is leading up to the normalisation of gay marriage, similar to the target of the political lobby group in which Card was involved. Regardless of their opinion of homosexual "marriage," every American who believes in democracy should be outraged that any court should take it upon itself to dictate such a social innovation without recourse to democratic process.
...
Supporters of homosexual "marriage" dismiss warnings like mine as the predictable ranting of people who hate progress. But the Massachusetts Supreme Court has made its decision without even a cursory attempt to ascertain the social costs. The judges have taken it on faith that it will do no harm.
You can't add a runway to an airport in America without years of carefully researched environmental impact statements. But you can radically reorder the fundamental social unit of society without political process or serious research.
Let me put it another way. The sex life of the people around me is none of my business; the homosexuality of some of my friends and associates has made no barrier between us, and as far as I know, my heterosexuality hasn't bothered them. That's what tolerance looks like.
Far be it for me to say that Card wasn't homophobic, or approved of homosexuality. Clearly that's not the case. Regardless of this, his major beef seems not to be with the existence of long term homosexuality, but rather the use of the word "marriage" for homosexual unions, equating them to a heterosexual marriage. Card's argument seems to be that a heterosexual marriage forms itself on the idea of giving a male and female rolemodel to the offspring of their union, thus giving them insight into the male and female roles that they play in society and in the family. At no point in the article does Card say that this could not be done by a homosexual couple. He does seem to indicate, however, that children that grow up with a male and female role model are more likely to be balanced (Card says in his response to the criticism below that he has sources, but as with any subject with any sort of political sensitivity, there will be sources on either side of the argument with equally convincing proof).
...
Another issue on Card's agenda is "labelling", which is something that I have issues with myself, even if it is from the other part of the argument.
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?
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.
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.
In other words, society will bend all its efforts to seize upon any hint of homosexuality in our young people and encourage it.
I actually think this is already a problem in society, and that he nailed it on the head. With the emphasis on extending the GBLT anagram into something with increasingly more letters, there's clearly a desperate need for this kind of labelling, even though there is common place acknowledgement amongst the community that the scale of GLBT is rational rather than natural.
...
That's not saying that I agree with every part of the article. There are parts that clearly show a lack of knowledge about the growth of a GLBT individual and resort to sensationalism.
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.
It's that desire for normality, that discontent with perpetual adolescent sexuality, that is at least partly behind this hunger for homosexual "marriage."
...
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.
He also does not address the legal side effects of having no defined gay "marriage", or propose an alternative to "marriage" for the rights that a spouse has upon the death or incapacitation of their loved one, which would have leant his article to be more constructive, rather than an attack.
So, having read the 2004 article in it's entirety, I think I can safely be comfortable not Boycotting the Enders Game movie. In fact I have more respect for the author (despite his eccentricities through the article, and especially at the conclusion). He is simply a man on the other side of the argument from me, taking a fairly activist stance. So what about the 2008?
Reading through it, I don't see much new in the 2008 article. And I believe the 2004 is better written. I thought for a moment that he was going to address the idea of property from a homosexual union's point of view.
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.
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.
But he did not take the idea to it's next logical conclusion - suggesting that law would be more suited to giving a new definition to a homosexual coupling which granted rights to their chosen partner beyond power of attorney.
I think this next paragraph worth mentioning:
This is a term that was invented to describe people with a pathological fear of homosexuals - the kind of people who engage in acts of violence against gays. But the term was immediately extended to apply to anyone who opposed the homosexual activist agenda in any way.
A term that has mental-health implications (homophobe) is now routinely applied to anyone who deviates from the politically correct line. How long before opposing gay marriage, or refusing to recognize it, gets you officially classified as "mentally ill"?
Again, Card is taking offence to terminology and labelling, which as an author, he is quite qualified to do. You can see hints here of a 1984 style America - where language and the propaganda mill are entirely in control of what children and the public think of an individual of idea. Other than that, Card's 2nd article has done nothing but get a bit more extreme in his views, a little more disorganised in his ideas.
**
Based on these two articles, I can safely say that I feel comfortable watching Ender's Game, regardless of whether or no there are homophobic connotations to this work, created well before the hayday of political activity centred on gay marriage and the acceptance of homosexuality into normality (which, as I said in my introduction, I highly doubt). Card himself has recently issued a statement:
Ender’s Game is set more than a century in the future and has nothing to do with political issues that did not exist when the book was written in 1984.
With the recent Supreme Court ruling, the gay marriage issue becomes moot. The Full Faith and Credit clause of the Constitution will, sooner or later, give legal force in every state to any marriage contract recognized by any other state.
Now it will be interesting to see whether the victorious proponents of gay marriage will show tolerance toward those who disagreed with them when the issue was still in dispute.
Card has said that because the situation has been resolved, he will no longer go against gay marriage. Because it's law. It's done. He lost the argument. He's moving on. That's what most reasonable men would do. Shouldn't we do the same?