Orson Scott Card : Gay & Black Glossary

Orson Scott Card is my favourite science fiction writer. His books include Ender’s Game, The Songmaster, Wyrms and Red Prophet. The catch is, he is a Mormon and one of America’s most rabid homophobes. Oddly, there is no sign of this in his books. The sexuality in the books is definitely on the strange side despite his Puritanical public stances. I even speculated he might be gay himself. He is on the board of National Organization for Marriage an anti-gay-equality organisation. He funds lobbies to kill gays in Africa and funds blocking gay marriage. He funds a lobby to make being gay illegal. He says unspeakably cruel things about the children of gay couples. He claims many homosexuals first entered into that world through a disturbing seduction or rape or molestation or abuse. He calls for imposing Mormon sexual morality on everyone, with women subjugated to men.

To avoid giving him any more money to bash and kill gays and spread misinformation, many people are calling for boycotting his new film Ender’s Game due out 2013-11-01. I would normally go to the theatre to see this film of my favourite SciFi book of all time, but for this I will wait for it to appear at the library on DVD (Digital Video Disc).

Card’s rabid homophobia reminds me of myself before I had met any gay people and still believed all the lies my mother had told me about them. It was partly camouflage and partly anger at others who make no attempt to resist evil.

The Murder

Matvey Terekhov lived in Russia with his cousin Yakov, who ran an inn. Matvey was once extremely religious and ascetic, but left asceticism behind. Yakov, on the other hand, was obsessively religious. During Lent they both fasted eating nothing but boiled potatoes. Yakov discovered that Matvey was secretly pouring some oil on his potatoes. Yakov was horrified. Yakov was overcome with anger and Aglaya, Yakov’s wife, hit Matvey over the head with a bottle and killed him.

That is a great metaphor for what goes wrong when you base your life on endless petty thou-shalt-nots. You lose your sense of proportion. This story applies even more to Muslims that Kristians. They are driven nuts by fear of eternal roasting for violating trivial rules.

Orson Scott Card has lost his sense of proportion. He is arranging to have gays murdered for a very minor sin. Card should read what else Leviticus condemns people to death for.