I sure hope Orson Scott Card wasn't this much of a jerk when he wrote Speaker for the Dead

Orson Scott Card's opposition to gay rights is hardly news, but he's taken things to a new extreme: in a recent op-ed piece for the Mormon Times, he actually advocated overthrowing the government if gay marriage becomes legal:

Because when government is the enemy of marriage, then the people who are actually creating successful marriages have no choice but to change governments, by whatever means is made possible or necessary.*

Comics blogger Randy Lander of Inside Joke Theater is no fan of Card and his homophobia, and resents the fact that, as a comic store owner, he has an obligation to stock the forthcoming Marvel Comics adaptation of Card's Ender's Game. He's come up with what I think is a pretty brilliant solution:

I'm going to figure out what my profits are on the issues of Ender's Game, and when the miniseries is complete, I'm gonna write out a check to a Gay Rights charity here in Austin, and then I'm going to send a nice note to Mr. Card letting him know how much his work has helped to fund said charity. That seems a nice fuck you message that also happens to put some money in the hands of folks who need it.

Excelsior! 

*Never mind the fact that, statistically speaking, conservative Christians are not so good at "making marriages work." In fact, the divorce rate in Utah is nearly double that of Massachusetts.

Comments

[Elliot]

Ouch!

I fail to see a link between the government's marriage policies, which are mainly economic, and the moral & religious state of Mr. Card's marriage. But maybe it makes more sense to a Mormon who presumably views the American government as some kind of divinely anointed providential agent.

This reminds me of a blog post I once read by a convert to Eastern Orthodoxy. He boasted with great pride in his new denomination, because when a rogue priest blessed a same-sex marriage in an Orthodox chapel, some other priests went over and tore down the chapel, brick by brick, so as to erase the spiritual pollution, etc. This, the blogger ranted, was the only proper response to such a horrendous abomination, etc. Such a response seemed to indicate that he had taken to worshipping a graceless code of purity and propriety, defining himself far more by what he hated than by what he loved. Same goes for Card's call to overthrow the government. A little out of proportion. Maybe he should donate some money to fund marriage counselors instead or something.

[Richard]

I'm afraid you've just lost several readers, myself included, with your inflammatory and unjustified rhetoric against Orson Scott Card's positions.
You'll find that quite a lot
Christians and Americans - a great majority of them, in fact - aren't supportive of homosexual advocacy politics, especially when done with such bluntness as you just did from a so-called Christian standpoint.

Being a Christian liberal shouldn't be an excuse to be a hardcore Sodom & Ghomorra crusader.

Card = 1, McKee = 0

[Gabriel Mckee]

Wow... how to respond?

Well, first of all-- how long have you actually been reading this site? I have made no secret of my support for gay rights in general and marriage equality in particular. Just a few weeks ago I shared a pastoral prayer I wrote for my church's Pride Sunday service, in fact. Any readers that this loses me haven't been reading very long, or very closely, to begin with. Would you rather I lied about my beliefs? Fat chance of that.

Second, "inflammatory and unjustified"? Well, yeah, I guess I did call him a jerk. I may be willing to grant this one. But I ain't apologizing, because I really think he is a jerk, and I really do hope he wasn't a jerk 20 years ago, because I do really like "Speaker for the Dead."

As for "great majorities"-- numbers do not make one's positions just.

As for the "so-called Christian" crack-- is that really the kind of road you want to travel? If so, before long you'll be like Fred Phelps-- convinced that the 30 people who can tolerate you are the only true Christians in the world. Your church may disagree with mine on this one issue, but if you think that means my church isn't Christian... well...

Next up-- being a Mormon, or a conservative evangelical, or whatever, shouldn't be an excuse to advocate the overthrow of the government when it extends rights to people who disagree with you.

And lastly-- "Sodom and Gomorrah crusader"? I kind of like that. But I'll spell "Gomorrah" correctly, if you don't mind.