Orson Scott Card Is A Hateful Homophobe

Orson Scott Card, author of the multiple award-winning Ender's Game and Speaker for the Dead among other acclaimed works of speculative fiction, has recently published an anti-gay diatribe in the Mormon Times which is getting noticed by an influential gay blog, AfterElton.com as well as on the popular Whatever blog by science fiction author John Scalzi. Scalzi says it best for many:

Speaking as one of the heterosexually-married people OSC clearly hopes will respond to this clarion call of his, I have to say to him: Dude, no. Just, no. On the list of government actions that have genuinely threatened the well-being of the United States over the years, same-sex marriage is probably about number 36,000, wedged between cashmere subsidies and funding for whatever set of still pictures Ken Burns is slow-panning across on PBS this next year. On the other hand, initiatives intended to cancel out existing marriages and deprive citizens of rights they already have under law jump up to near the top of the list of things I personally worry about tearing at the national fabric. Call it a difference in perspective.

However, the AfterElton staff is not as forgiving:

I’ve read almost all of Card’s books, some of which are excellent and a few of which even include somewhat sympathetic portrayals of gay people. But I’ll never give another cent to this paranoid, delusional man.

[...]

Card has been saying outrageous, openly bigoted things about gays for years. But he has received little mainstream criticism, and major media players such as Marvel Comics, Warner Brothers, and Card's publisher Tom Doherty Associates continue to work with him.

Earlier this year, Card was given the prestigious Margaret A. Edwards Award by the Young Adults Library Services Association for his contributions to young adult literature. As my author friend David Levithan argued at the time, would they have given the award to an author who is as openly racist or sexist as Card is homophobic? Would an author who advocates a return to South Africa's apartheid be welcome at an awards ceremony anywhere other than a meeting of the Ku Klux Klan?

Orson Scott Card is a hateful, dangerous man. It’s high time more people treat him as such.

And Paul Constant over at Slog in a piece entitled "Let’s Call a Jackass a Jackass" is trying to publicize "Orson Scott Card is a hateful homophobe." Mad Professah agrees.