One more author.

Of Ender's Game, actually. Orson Scott Card is an iconic writer in science-fiction and fantasy. The Ender series alone brought him huge success, and his awards and accolades are numerous. He's a very prolific and influential scribe.

The subject of this post, however, is not his fictional work, but his personal essays and views on current affairs and life. This will be an antithesis to my extollation of the author Dan Simmons in the Blog Posts section http://www.atheistnexus.org/profiles/blogs/an-authors-interesting-v... who proved, in my opinion, to be a reasonable, free-thinking individual.

Card, however, is an ideologue. Though bright and amiable (he really is very sweet; I met him 15 years ago at an awards ceremony--he even signed my book), the "World Watch" weekly column on his website marks him as a latent card-carrying Rightist. His rants about Communism, Socialism, the Iraq War, the "liberal media," and religion--yes, he's a Mormon--plant him comfortably on Joe Wilson's side of the aisle. Card would invariably deny this, claiming to actually be a disaffected Democrat whose party has lost all its values. But since most ideologues of his generation on either side of the political spectrum make the same claim, I'll dismiss it with impunity. His column http://www.hatrack.com/ is rife with the kind of oversimplification and bating that is the staple of an ideological lemming.

My focus, though, is not my aversion to his collectivist propensities. It's about my concurrence with his position on religion and homosexuality.

Card thinks gays are sinners: http://www.nauvoo.com/library/card-hypocrites.html

More accurately, Card's religion mandates that gays are sinners.

In the above essay from 20 years ago, Card takes on the typical role of the religious objector to social change based almost solely on the doctrines of his faith, dextrously whipping out euphemism and guilt harbored from the broken American family to justify the position of the "faithful." All the hackneyed (and inexcusable) arguments are presented, but with a doughy, condescending smile. As I said, typical. However, he's right about one thing:

One thing is certain: one cannot serve two masters. And when one's life is given over to one community that demands utter allegiance, it cannot be given to another. The LDS church is
one such community. The homosexual community seems to be another. And when I read the
statements of those who claim to be both LDS and homosexual, trying to persuade the former
community to cease making their membership contingent upon abandoning the latter, I wonder if
they realize that the price of such "tolerance" would be, in the long run, the destruction of the
Church.

Capitulation. Integrity. Standing up for what you believe.

I disagree with 90% of what Card believes, but I respect him for standing up for it. I respect any religious person for doing the same.

I do not respect supposedly religious people who half-ass with their religion.

The Mormon Church cannot accept homosexuality and still call itself the Mormon Church. Likewise with all sects of Christianity. And (as all we secularists know) especially Islam. Mormon, Catholic and Protestant scripture specifically condemns homosexuality. And since these religions are built upon their scripture, they cannot ignore even a single doctrine and still maintain the integrity of their inception, however flawed that inception is. Religion precludes progress. Always has. And so I must say that the acceptance that homosexuals seek in religion is not only pointless, but illogical. Why do they seek assimilation into a community who deems their very nature abhorrent?

Now, Card attempts to include the rest of America into this view on homosexuality, and we know that he is wrong. Not only statistically, but legally, ethically, and morally. But within his own repressive, backward and illogical community, he is speaking for them. And he has every right to. He is a Christian, a Mormon, and he adheres to the doctrines of his faith. That is what it is to be faithful. If he and his brethren don't want to accept homosexuality, they don't have to. They'll eventually repress themselves into non-existence, and I say let them.

They aren't "immoral," though.

They're just wrong.


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