04.21.09
Orson Scott Card and the trouble with the gays
Hear that sound? That was thousands of gay nerds hurling Tor paperbacks against the wall. It’s something that happens every time Orson Scott Card opens his mouth and says anything about homosexuality.
Today, Joe.My.God is reporting that hero-of-geek-lit OSC (author of Ender’s Game and many other speculative fiction novels and short stories) has joined the board of directors of the National Organization for Marriage, the anti-gay-marriage group responsible for the oft-parodied “Gathering Storm” ad.
I’ve been a fan of OSC since I was very young. I loved the stories of Ender and Bean - stories of children who are different and catch a lot of crap for it, who are tormented by everyone they know but still hold on to their integrity and compassion.
These portrayals resonate with most nerds, who already have “different” and “tormented” on lockdown, and would like to believe - need to believe - that they, like Ender, like Bean, are also special, powerful, and wise beyond their years. At least, I know I did.
Gay nerds, of course, usually get an extra helping of different and tormented, which (anecdotally speaking) seems to cause many of us to identify all the more strongly with OSC’s protagonists. As a seriously miserable middle schooler, I took a lot of comfort in the Ender series. Orson Scott Card was one adult who really got it, who knew what it was to be young and different and at the mercy of your peers.
That’s why it was so jarring when I found out that OSC believes to the core of his being that homosexuality is immoral, and that any institution or government that seek to legitimize it “is [his] mortal enemy“. When I was a young person reading OSC’s books, I assumed that because he had such a deep understanding of the pain of being different, he would obviously support things that would make being different less painful.
But of course, it’s not that easy. There are explicitly queer characters in many of OSC’s novels, most often struggling against themselves, but there is nothing simple or moralizing in his portrayals of these people - and still, he writes these essays condemning gays for, well… existing. And daring to state that our existence is not a crime.
I know many gay people who were huge OSC fans before they found out about his stance on homosexuality, and who are no longer able to enjoy his books as they once were. I understand this - it seems a betrayal of the trust we placed in OSC as teens.
As for me, I still reread the Ender and Bean books from time to time. The themes they deal with still fascinate me, and many of the values they endorse are ones I share. I do wish that OSC’s Mormon viewpoint didn’t function to muddle the message implicit in his Enderverse novels, that people who are different are valuable people from whom we can learn much. I have learned much from the novels of Orson Scott Card - now I wish he could learn something from people like me.
Anna Johnson said,
April 22, 2009 at 7:34 am
Yeah, I hate him so much since I learned what a self-hating guy he is. I mean, let’s be honest: “Ender’s Game” contains a significant proportion of soapy, naked protagonists wrestling in the shower, and that’s just the tip of the fag iceberg.
SMD said,
April 22, 2009 at 8:47 am
I think the problem for a lot of people now is that it’s nearly impossible to separate OSC from his personal views. He’s become so polarized in the lit community as this gay-bashing hate-monger that few people can see him as the writer of darn good books. I won’t buy any more of his books primarily because of that fact. It’s one thing to be a complete jack*ss, it’s another to be like OSC.
rachel said,
April 23, 2009 at 10:33 pm
Anna: yeah, I see the homoeroticism in Ender’s Game too.
There’s also Anton in the latter books of the Bean series, who is gay but married because for him, the biological imperative to procreate was a stronger compulsion than sexual desire.
Songmaster is really complex regarding gay stuff too - the only sympathetic adult character in the novel is a gay man, and while pretty much gets killed of by castration (the gay, it always ends in death!), that event is a tragic one in the novel. And while he does kind of sleep with the protagonist when the protagonist is in his mid-teens, it’s very clear that this is loving and gentle and awesome homosexual acts (as opposed to the sexual abuse that the protagonist ungoes at ~9, at the hands of a man who is a bad guy, abusing a beautiful young boy, but is not explicitly homosexual).
OSC discusses reactions to Songmaster (among a whole bunch of other crap about gay stuff) in this essay, and it’s actually quite interesting: http://www.nauvoo.com/library/card-hypocrites.html
All in all, there’s way more gay in OSC books than any other Mormon YA author I’ve read (and since I have this fascination with moralizing YA SF/F, that’s actually an embarrassing number of authors).
SMD: Agreed. I also try not to buy his books because I don’t want my money going to organizations like NOM. I still read them, though (#bookz on undernet is fantastic for that, FYI).
Alex said,
May 4, 2009 at 7:26 pm
Despite numerous recommendations throughout middle and high school, I didn’t read Ender’s Game until college, and after having been a staff member on a trip of high school students, for whom I developed a serious parental feelings. My primary reaction was horror at what was done to children, and made me think of Ursula Le Guin’s “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas”. I’m not sure what they did to those kids was justified. I had also read about OSC’s views, so that may have colored my views.