Orson Scott Card endorses treason:
The first and greatest threat from court decisions in California and Massachusetts, giving legal recognition to “gay marriage,” is that it marks the end of democracy in America.
These judges are making new law without any democratic process; in fact, their decisions are striking down laws enacted by majority vote.[... blahzee bloozee blooble for 500 pages ...]
If America becomes a place where our children are taken from us by law and forced to attend schools where they are taught that cohabitation is as good as marriage, that motherhood doesn’t require a husband or father, and that homosexuality is as valid a choice as heterosexuality for their future lives, then why in the world should married people continue to accept the authority of such a government?
What these dictator-judges do not seem to understand is that their authority extends only as far as people choose to obey them.
How long before married people answer the dictators thus: Regardless of law, marriage has only one definition, and any government that attempts to change it is my mortal enemy. I will act to destroy that government and bring it down, so it can be replaced with a government that will respect and support marriage, and help me raise my children in a society where they will expect to marry in their turn.
Biological imperatives trump laws. American government cannot fight against marriage and hope to endure. If the Constitution is defined in such a way as to destroy the privileged position of marriage, it is that insane Constitution, not marriage, that will die.
In a chilling post-script, activist, uh, elected officials have just expanded gay marriage rights in Massachusetts, in direct defiance of the Bible, or Darwin, or something. I think this means my wife has to let me start dating, although I may have to start dating guys – I’ll have to go down to the DMV so the fine public servants there can update me on the current status of my personal life. John McCain, only your Family Values™ can preserve the sanctity of marriage!
If Obama becomes our first Afro-Homo-Elito-Atheist Muslim President, and with both houses of Congress likely controlled by the DhimmifeatocRATs, expect to see so, so much more of this. And this.
July 30, 2008 at 5:02 am
Card is a walking contradiction. His novels are richly imaginative and well-written, and not evidently shaped by his Mormon fundamentalism. In fact God is absent from his imaginary worlds, and so is his bluenose morality. He even has some very weird sex, including between humans and extraterrestrials.
At the same time, he writes awful, clunky, preachy Mormon fiction about elders on missions, and insane rants like this. I think there must be two of him.
July 30, 2008 at 5:56 am
Piss on this guy. Time to sell all of my OSC books to the used bookstore. Normally I don’t let a writer’s views affect my enjoyment of his or her books, but this is just too damn much.
Take his article, replace the word “gay” with the word “Mormon”, and see how he feels about the tyranny of the majority then. Ass.
July 30, 2008 at 6:30 am
Feh, that whole “Memory of Earth” series was a long, boring Book of Job. Card can write some good sci-fi when he wants, but he needs less preach-preach and more pew-pew.
July 30, 2008 at 6:40 am
[...] it made me really sad to see this over on PMI today, Card basically taking up the whole Bush administration that judges who strike [...]
July 30, 2008 at 6:44 am
Judges’ authority might only as far as people choose to obey them, but their responsibility extends beyond statute or tyranny of the majority. They must also consider the requirements of all applicable constitutions, and the Massachusetts courts have made it abundantly clear that the state constitution is the basis for their recent rulings. If anybody doesn’t like that, they can seek amendment of whichever constitution is at issue. When Card ignores that possibility in favor of insurrection, he steps over a line from advocacy to treason.
July 30, 2008 at 6:47 am
I, for one refuse to live in a state where the definition of marriage is a between a bearded old fool and five or more pasty young women arguing over who gets to eat the last potato.
July 30, 2008 at 7:23 am
[...] Also, the later Ender’s Game books sucked. Share this post with: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages. [...]
July 30, 2008 at 7:46 am
OK. That semi-coherent screed actually meets the minimal definition of sedition, which is a very serious federal felony. Why aren’t the FBI breaking down his door and hauling him off to Leavenworth or, better yet, Gitmo? Oh yeah, he’s not brown or Muslim.
July 30, 2008 at 7:58 am
Yes, Orson Scott Card wrote some good books … like The Worthing Chronicle (1982) and Hart’s Hope (1983). By Ender’s Game he was already heading steeply downhill. He hasn’t produced anything worth reading — let alone “richly imaginative” — in 20-odd years.
July 30, 2008 at 8:16 am
“How long before married people answer the dictators thus: Regardless of law, marriage has only one definition, and any government that attempts to change it is my mortal enemy. I will act to destroy that government and bring it down”
Gee, Mr. Card, I don’t know how long it will be before that happens. Why aren’t *you* doing it?
If you don’t like gay marriage, don’t get gay married.
July 30, 2008 at 8:34 am
This makes me very, very sad. I first read Ender’s Game as a pretty little kid, and it was a formative experience. It strongly colored, and continues to color, my philosophy on violence, the moral use of power, and genocide. It also perfectly described the world of a gifted kid, in a way that made me feel welcome and less alone.
I clicked through and read that execrable screed, and now I’m crying. He’s been going downhill for years, with his politics and religion infiltrating his books more and more–but he was still the guy who wrote Ender. Now, though, he’s actually advocating rebellion because, in a couple of places, people who squick him out can get married.
Somewhere in there, there must still be a man of intelligence, empathy, and humility–but all that’s on display here is the bitterly bigoted shell of somebody I used to respect.
July 30, 2008 at 8:35 am
Dammit. Stupid close tags.
July 30, 2008 at 8:36 am
[...] MAYBE “CRAZY” ISN’T THE WORD, but I don’t quite “get” Orson Scott Card’s line of argument here: State job is not to redefine marriage. (Via: The Poor Man Institute) [...]
July 30, 2008 at 8:39 am
It’s his imaginary afterlife planet, we’re just payin’ rent.
July 30, 2008 at 8:41 am
When Mormon science fiction libertarians pronounce themselves in revolt, clearly we should all be trembling. Inside. A little bit.
July 30, 2008 at 8:52 am
Damn. First Larry Niven saying we should tell immigrants they’re going to be kidnapped and sawn up for their organs, and now this. Must be that all old conservatives do like Reagan and forget the difference between their stories and reality.
July 30, 2008 at 8:55 am
In Card’s final years, a retrospective diagnosis will at last be confirmed.
Personally, I think a Thetan crawled up his ass.
July 30, 2008 at 8:58 am
So, instead of fleeing for their lives to Utah, the Mormons should have taken up arms against the tyrannical government because it refused to recognize that the “one definition of marriage” was polygamy? Is that what he is saying?
July 30, 2008 at 9:05 am
“I will act to destroy that government and bring it down, so it can be replaced with a government that will respect and support marriage, and help me raise my children in a society where they will expect to marry in their turn.”
D00d–go for it. Or, in the Yiddish, ‘Ess in gezundteh heit’ (eat in good health).
“…where they will expect to marry in their turn.” Thank G-d I never read this clown. What a pompous idiot.
July 30, 2008 at 11:02 am
Democracy has been ending for a long time: the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts has been finding state laws unconstitutional since at least 1783.
July 30, 2008 at 11:10 am
Maybe you’re being satirical (AKA racist with a smile), but thanks to your phrase low-information Mormon voters will decide not to vote for Obama.
All Americans need to watch what they say, watch what they do.
July 30, 2008 at 11:19 am
Maybe you’re being satirical (AKA racist with a smile), but thanks to your phrase low-information Mormon voters will decide not to vote for Obama.
Damn you, Editors! You and your massively popular website have ruined everything! Didn’t you know you were supposed to keep that secret in order to lull the masses into a false sense of security?!
July 30, 2008 at 12:13 pm
I for one find concern trolls to be cute, in a drunken GOP diaper-wearing Senator talking to a young male page sort-a way.
July 30, 2008 at 1:35 pm
Larry Niven has always been a wingnut, and it shows in his novels — some more than others, certainly. The ones where he goes light on the politics are often quite amusing. But they’re just space operas. Card’s earlier work has, if not profundity, at least depth of humanity and an intelligible and honorable moral sensibility. These ravings just don’t connect up to the person behind that work at all.
So I agree with other commenters — some kind of worm has gotten into his brain.
July 30, 2008 at 2:31 pm
When I first saw an excerpt from that passage this morning, I wondered if it was from Warren Jeffs.
So bloody ironic to see a devout Mormon ranting about the One True Definition of marriage. (And don’t you know there are some devout mainstream Mormons out there pondering whether God is going to provide a new revelation on “plural marriage” sometime soon?)
July 30, 2008 at 3:13 pm
If I may be so bold as to offer the response I wrote earlier today.
His rambling would be amusing if it weren’t filled with bigotry. He goes from gay marriage, to the word “homophobe”, to homeschooling, to heterosexuality in animals, to the role of reproduction in marriage, to the definition of property, to straight people not doing enough to protect the sacred institution of marriage. It’s like a buffet of loathsomeness.
July 30, 2008 at 3:16 pm
“Oh, him? He’s harmless. Part of the free speech movement at Berkeley in the sixties. I think he did a little too much LDS…”
Since I couldn’t find a clip of the actual quote, and in honor of slash-fan-fic etc:
July 30, 2008 at 3:21 pm
Also OSC responds (sort of)
http://www.ornery.org/essays/warwatch/2008-07-20-1.html
July 30, 2008 at 7:24 pm
I think he did a little too much LDS…
Ha! The first time I saw that movie I was on a date with a lovely example of Mormon sweetiehood (a bishop’s daughter, no less). She got a kick out of that line.
Larry Niven has always been a wingnut, and it shows in his novels — some more than others, certainly.
Yes indeed. I like most of his space-opera stuff, but Lucifer’s Hammer (f’rinstance) read like a goddam Bircher screed.
July 30, 2008 at 8:17 pm
Piers Anthony demands, “all kittens must be shaved.”
Oh, Fritz!
July 30, 2008 at 11:35 pm
Piers Anthony demands, “all kittens must be shaved.”
Now Fritz, there’s just no need at this time to bring up the subject of shaved pussies.
July 31, 2008 at 9:50 am
Oh, please! Give me a break!
So, you’re advocating treason because you want to continue being a bigot. I hope HSA puts you on a short leash!
July 31, 2008 at 10:03 am
Great Cthulhu said:
but he needs less preach-preach and more pew-pew.
Eh? You mean he should shut the fuck up, sit down in his pew and pick up his hymnal?
I guess I could live with that.
July 31, 2008 at 11:45 am
Bring it, bitchez. I’ll defend my country and take this Card fellow out should he commit treason.
July 31, 2008 at 10:45 pm
Not ashamed to admit it: I read the Memory of Earth book in high school–having no idea they were supposed to be some sort of crazy Mormon allegory–and loved the shit out of them. They were epic. Certainly better than the actual Book of Mormon, even if that IS the definition of damning with faint praise. And the first few Alvin Maker books were pretty boss. What can I say? But I think–and I’m not being facetious here–that at some point he suffered some sort of debilitating brain aneurysm, leading him to write stuff like this, and that Turner-Diaries-as-written-by-a-hypercaffeinated-twelve-year-old Empire book that we were all mocking when it came out.
July 31, 2008 at 10:46 pm
…also, I would note that in the Memory of Earth series, there’s a pretty unambiguous condemnation of the kind of homophobic violence of which Card seems so enamored these days. Go figure.
August 1, 2008 at 4:48 am
Orson Scott Card Has Always Been an Asshat
August 2, 2008 at 11:38 pm
Please give him credit for “how appropriate. You fight like a cow,” if nothing else.
August 4, 2008 at 7:39 am
How the heck does he get from gays getting married, to:
If America becomes a place where our children are taken from us by law and forced to attend schools where they are taught that cohabitation is as good as marriage, that motherhood doesn’t require a husband or father,
You start with gay married, and end up with a fricking Maoist cultural revolution. Is that just amazingly paranoid, or is it really a dishonest line of argumentation? Or what?
August 4, 2008 at 7:39 am
sorry, s/b “you start with gay marriage”
December 21, 2008 at 3:31 pm
[...] Orsen Scott Card, “Time for a new Civil War!“ [...]
December 23, 2008 at 8:19 pm
[...] Orsen Scott Card, “If gays get married, I’m resuming the Civil War“ [...]
December 30, 2008 at 8:12 pm
His books are shit too. Ender’s Game was the most overrated sci-fi book I’ve read in at least a decade. First forty pages were interesting, the rest were garbage.
January 21, 2009 at 11:06 pm
[...] I will “bring on” the winner of Chickenhawk of the Year. Heh heh heh. It’s Orson Scott Card: How long before married people answer the dictators thus: Regardless of law, marriage has only one [...]