“‘ “I find the comparison between civil rights based on race and supposed new rights being granted for what amounts to deviant behavior to be really kind of ridiculous. There is no comparison. A black as a person does not by being black harm anyone. Gay rights is a collective delusion that’s being attempted. And the idea of ‘gay marriage’ — it’s hard to find a ridiculous enough comparison.'” — Orson Scott Card
The latest post-conference mishagosh comes to us courtesy of the Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA), which gave this year’s Margaret A. Edwards Award to Orson Scott Card for his works, Ender’s Game (1985) and Ender’s Shadow.
If you know anything about Card’s views about homosexuality — or about the Edwards award,which “recognizes an author’s work in helping adolescents become aware of themselves and addressing questions about their role and importance in relationships, society, and in the world” — that’s like the Anti-Defamation League giving Bobby Fisher a lifetime achievement award.
In all fairness to the committee, if they had asked the general question “what do we know about Orson Scott Card” (and whether you think the committee should have done that is open for discussion; I say yes, that’s due diligence), it would have taken some effort to uncover Card’s virulent homophobia, and you’d almost have to be looking for it.
A Google search for Orson Scott Card (10 results per page) lists 9 neutral or positive sites about OSC. I had to get to get to the 10th link to read a Salon article (by Donna Minkowitz, a lesbian, no less) in which the author notes on the first page, “But I’d somehow failed to ascertain that Card was a disgustingly outspoken homophobe.”
(Note: the spell-check in WordPress doesn’t even recognize “homophobe” as a word. Then again, it also doesn’t recognize “WordPress.”)
The real damage is in that bastion of impartiality, Wikipedia. Card’s Wikipedia article barely references his opinions about homosexuality, and only in an external link; to get a fuller story, you’d have to go to the Talk page and then look for it. You certainly won’t find Card’s own words on the topic, which include:
Laws against homosexual behavior should remain on the books, not to be indiscriminately enforced against anyone who happens to be caught violating them, but to be used when necessary to send a clear message that those who flagrantly violate society’s regulation of sexual behavior cannot be permitted to remain as acceptable, equal citizens within that society.
Dudes and dudettes, that’s hard-core! Even most “compassionate conservatives” don’t speak that directly, not even when they agree with Card.
But if you read this blog you know I have written that Wikipedia often seems more like a Secret Treehouse Club than everyone’s encyclopedia. Card’s Wikipedia page isn’t a biography, it’s an encomium by true believers who maintain fierce control over Card’s myth.
As for Bobby Fisher, his Wikipedia page references Fisher’s anti-Semitism. Despite all the babble on Card’s Talk page, if there’s a consistent rule about what can be said about an author, I’ll be damned if I can figure out what it is.
Besides, as Tracy Nectoux said on GLBTRT-L, short of saying gays should be trucked to death camps, homophobic comments by famous people don’t warrant sustained attention in the public sphere. This tsuris only occasioned a strong article in School Library Journal and mild back-pedaling from the awards committee, who said that they hadn’t researched Card prior to this award (I cringe when “information professionals” say things like that) and furthermore — ladies and gentlemen, prepare to hoist an eyebrow or two — “personal views aren’t part of the selection criteria.”
In terms of who we as a profession honor as an association — or in terms of any work effort — we need to make clear-eyed choices. We don’t get a lot of choices in our lifetime, really, not for awards, or books to read, or people to love. Card took up time and energy that could have been directed to someone else. It wasn’t intentional, but what’s done is done.
Oh well. Next year in Jerusalem.
If the award did any good, it is this: many more librarians know the truth about Orson Scott Card.
Posted on this day, other years:
- Keeping Council - 2018
- My ALA YouTube Contribution: ALA's GLBT Policies - 2009
- Out and About, Early 2009 - 2009
- Google Features MPOW in Library Newsletter - 2006
- Transparency, Objectivity, and Independence--Or Not? - 2005
As a literature teacher, Card’s works are outstanding, and have greatly influenced my students in very positive ways. Card’s views are NOT well-known, as he doesn’t make a big display of them during his appearances and interviews, unless asked directly. He has a right to view homosexuality as sin, without being hoisted upon that petard every time he comes up for an award. We have a right to disagree with him–even vociferously so–without resorting to the childish name-calling displayed in the title chosen for the initial post of this blog.
Just some clarifications for Elver:
Being a Christian isn’t about following the Bible, it’s about following Christ, hence the word.
Biblical literalists (who are much fewer than you might think) shouldn’t be opening their mouths about the directives god lays down, unless they’re willing to do some horrible things to their wives, sons and daughters, or to those who fail to follow those same laws. You quote from Leviticus, yet I bet you wouldn’t stone a child to death for being disobedient.
You (Elver) specifically trivialized the tribulations caused by the gay marriage situation and then dismissed comments which showed how wrong you were, claiming that your point was still valid. The fact is, legislation preventing gay marriage has already been used to legally discriminate against people in their jobs and in their daily lives. That sounds fairly extreme to me. Also, there have been over twelve hundred benefits associated with marriage. That also doesn’t sound so trivial.
The Constitution is the document which governs our rights, not the Bible. And the Constitution states that all men are created equal, and endowed with certain inalienable rights.
There is no justifiable reason which would actually stand up in a court of law for discriminating between gays and heteros when it comes to marriage laws. That’s because this is not a theocracy. We have a separation of Church and State, and the only defense for anti-gay sentiment is religious in nature, as you showed here already.
On the subject at hand; I agree that a person’s work should be the primaryevidence on which awards should be based, but an author’s opinions should also be evaluated. Few would be so arrogant as to say they can know all the differing ways that those opinions might be expressed in books. Heinlein stomped his opinions out in his books with size 12 cork boots, but not all authors are so unsubtle. (And for the record, I loved the original Ender’s Game, and most of Heinlein’s works too. Although I have to admit he’s (RAH) much harder to read since I grew up enough to realize what things he was saying.)
A.G., thanks for a great comment. I agree on Heinlein; I adored him as a child, and it has been hard to grow up and realize some of his weaknesses as a writer.
n.b. I had a literature instructor who made the case that Hemingway approached women far more realistically than most writers. That’s a really interesting perspective. I’ve re-read some Hemingway, and for all the macho language, the women are remarkably portrayed. Re-reading one of his key works through a feminist reading lens could be an interesting idea for a book group!
Learning about this controversy this week is very interesting for me as a Mormon, as a middle school teacher and as an OSCard fan. I’ve read Card for a long time, and I know LDS doctrine about as well as anybody. I’m pretty sure he’s “coloring inside the lines.”
So here’s what made it interesting this week. We just had a funeral for the president of our church. Just outside the funeral, as close as was legally allowed, a group of protesters gathered to decry the deceased president as an enabler of homosexuality. We have a local satirist who wrote a column about it. Here’s a link.
http://www.sltrib.com/columnists/ci_8210106
Mormon views on homosexual attraction are more nuanced than most people who don’t know our doctrine can imagine. They are almost impossible to sum up on a blog. Here’s my best attempt: Same sex attraction is natural. There are many natural urges that we learn to control as we progress through life. The goal of life is to find joy while learning to love God and love one another.
A more complete summary can be found on the LDS web site. It’s a leaflet written to help people with same sex attraction understand what the church actually believes and teaches. Here’s a link.
http://lds.org/ldsorg/v/index.jsp?vgnextoid=e1fa5f74db46c010VgnVCM1000004d82620aRCRD&locale=0&sourceId=3e05c8322e1b3110VgnVCM100000176f620a____&hideNav=1&contentLocale=0
Based on prior conversations with active Homosexuals, I’m going to guess that a lot of socially liberal people are horrified with the views as expressed in that document. Likewise, based on conversations with practicing Christians from more conservative churches than mine, I KNOW that they consider our views to be outside the mainstream.
So, coming back to Card, my question is this “Does any of that really matter when it comes to reading his works with young adult development in mind?” I suppose it does if his books have subtle or not so subtle portrayals of homosexual characters.
I can think of two books where he describes characters with homosexual attraction – “Songmaster” and “Memory of Earth.” In both books the characters are important for other reasons. Same gender attraction is something that explains some of the pain and conflict in their lives. In both cases, the conflict isn’t between themselves and self acceptance. It’s between them and the culture in which they find themselves.
Now, I know from reading that Scott Card is a fan of Anne McCaffrey. She had a very different position on same sex attraction. I would characterize her description as celebratory and accepting. The only pain her homosexual characters feel because of their attraction and relationships are normal spousal feelings of anxiety, separation and loss. The relationship just happens to be homosexual.
I enjoy reading McCaffrey. I also enjoy reading Card. Reading both authors played an important part in the development of my character. I hate to imagine a world where everyone feels exactly the same about everything or is only allowed to express ideas that fit a socially constructed intellectual orthodoxy. (THAT, by the way, is one reason why I teach middle school and not at a college somewhere.)
Librarians would (and should) be horrified if anyone ever asks them not to celebrate McCaffrey. Card should receive the same courtesy.
K. Scott, the committee said they weren’t familiar with Card’s views, and I am just doing my best to ensure no one can use that excuse again.
Personally, I consider homophobia to be a form of childishness, like wanting to eat ice cream for dinner. Just because you believe in it doesn’t make it right. Card can indeed decide that homosexuality is a sin, but once he does he is reduced to a level of ridiculousness.
If he were railing against Jews or people of color, we wouldn’t be having this discussion.
As a librarian, I don’t have to “celebrate” Card, anymore than I have to celebrate any other author in a collection. that’s not in our code of ethics. I will fight to the end to include his works in our libraries, but I don’t have to take the next step and “celebrate” him. You wanna celebrate him, knock yourself out. There are so many authors to celebrate.
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It’s funny, but I had been reading Orson Scott Card’s Ender series this past few months (I just finished Xenocide), and I had no idea about his controversial views, until I heard a rant recently.
I was floored. The brilliant writing and thoughtful themes were in so incongruous with his opinions on homosexuality. I actually wrote about it on my blog as well sci fi addict.
I am a fan of OSC’s fiction and his essays on all subjects. I consistently find them to be well-reasoned.
This thread seems to have been started with an ad hominem attack against Card, taking it for granted that the audience would find his comments to be outrageous, ignorant, hateful, etc. Most respondents do seem to find the comments to be so. But those who challenge that fact have themselves been attacked both personally and in their reasoning.
What’s lacking here is a well-reasoned defense of the assertion that Card’s views are homophobic. Doesn’t homophbia mean “fear” of homosexuals or homosexuality? I see no evidence in these quotes or anything else he has written that he is afraid. So if the acusation is not homophobia, what is it? Hatefulness, illegality, ignorance? Card believes civil rights are intrinsic and gay rights are contrived. He thinks marriage is an institution that should apply only to a man and a woman. He thinks governments should maintain some sort of laws governing some sort of homosexual behavior. It’s not at all clear to what laws he is referring and there is no citation. I think that we can all agree that these views, distilled to their essence, are not uncommon. Is it the way he expressed them that is so objectionable? Or are they objectionable simply because you disagree?
at the end of the day its just a little sad to know that the author who created what could be described as the closest thing i have to a hero (in ender), in the real world believes my girlfriend and i are the equivilant of being the spawn of the devil because we love each other and should have no rights equal to that of a straight couple.
we live in a predominantly free world when it comes down to opinion, and therefor it is within cards rights to feel however he wants… its just… sad.
until i did a internet search and this all came out to me a few years back, i would have thought of card as being the most amazing human alive to create such beings of such moral fibre and understanding of the world around them. obviously i have confused fantasy with the real world… but you get that.
JC, you may have spoken the best words on this topic.
I’ve only read Enders Game but all of a sudden i want o go buy them all and scan them for homophobia >_<
I’d like to say that Enders Game was a fantastic book, i have no problem with him being homophobic, and it in no way seemed homophobic to me when i was 13. then again i wasn’t exactly looking for any homophobia so i could have missed it.
I’m pretty sure that if i never noticed it and it didn’t affect me negatively in any way, that other children can enjoy a good piece of literature without having to care about the back round of the author.
Anyways, i don’t see why its so important to put an authors beliefs under a microscope when it comes to assessing the quality of a book. your basically judging the book by its cover (or in this case, author.
just giving a bit of an opinion 🙂
He has a right to his opinions, as do everyone else. I have read some of his other novels, “Songmaster” and “A Planet Called Treason,” in which he addresses homosexuality and transgenderism respectfully in a way that a “homophobe” wouldn’t have handled these topics. The protagonist, main character, in Songmaster had a homosexual love affair, and the protagonist in Treason grew boobs and dressed like a woman. He may be conservative at heart, but through his fictional works I had a heart for the suffering of these two characters and know he must, also.
Ever since I went vegan two months ago, I’ve been intensely studying power struggles and oppression. Reading blogs and books, you know. I was adding a book to my favorite books list on a profile page and looking at the two older books on the list, which were the only books from before college, the only books on the list that hadn’t changed my life. And it struck me then, the question: what are the power relationships in these two books (particularly Ender’s Game)? Could Ender’s Game actually be a book about something I have come to disapprove of with regard to power? At this point, I’m thinking I’m going to strongly disapprove of some things going on in there when I re-read it. There is one thing I remembered a lot when I was taking psychology courses and studying Eastern religion: it seemed bizarre that OSC portrayed Eastern ritual as so destructive and OCD (obsessive-compulsive disorder) as as its source.
Anyway, I’m really appalled. Ender’s Game was my favorite book when I read it. What intense, internal power struggles. And external. No wonder Ender’s Game portrays such a bleak future that always left me feeling empty. Conservatism is doomed, in my not-so-humble opinion. I don’t know what God OSC worships, but I worship the gods of nonviolence and love. For me, I can only envision a future of those things. I cannot believe that the end won’t be a homecoming to those aforementioned things which guide me. I feel awfully sorry for OSC in his cold, bleak future. I think he’s actually an alien from Pluto – how else can we explain the coldness?
I took the book off my list of favs. Regardless of whether or not I can still appreciate it as a work of art, I don’t wish to promote a bleak world.
It’s very depressing how dogmatic religious beliefs can bring such blind hate into the minds of people who are otherwise quite intelligent.
I met Orson Scott Card once, at a book signing in the suburbs of Minneapolis/St. Paul. I had no idea about his politics, and thought him to be a personable guy in the brief moment that I had contact with him. I wanted to get my copy of Ender’s Game signed because my then-boyfriend had been reading it to me in bed all week. I had not read the book before, and it was a good story that I enjoyed immensely.
When I read about OSC’s open homophobia, it bummed me out extremely. But then again, it always sucks when you hear someone you like has a rather unattractive personality trait. He was never my hero, so it wasn’t like when a hero falls, but it is sort of like it in microcosm. It’s like when you find out that the cute guy in class won’t date black chicks, and therefore, would not be likely to date you. Or, rather, me. You get the point.
But then again, it isn’t like that at all. If the award is based at all on his body of work, then his body of work certainly contains the fact that he thinks that homosexuals don’t deserve to shape society and define marriage at all, because that is best left to “the religion that invented marriage.” Hah, no, seriously, that was another homophobe I knew who said that.
I’m sure he didn’t write all those awful things he said about queer folks hoping that young GLBTQI people would read it and find themselves feeling horrible. I’m sure he just thinks there’s something wrong with them. Something that should be fixed before they become those awful adult homosexuals. You know, trying to have the same rights as straights and all, all of them telling him that words do make an impact on lives, and that is why we write them.
Kids read stuff that’s not “meant for their age group” all the time. I devoured Stranger in a Strange Land in my teens and never touched the stuff that Heinlein meant as being for teens.
If you’re giving a prize for a man’s entire ouvre, that also means blogs. If that is the case, then his winning the prize is unfair on the level that he is an outspoken homophobe. (Gay kids need love too.)
There are people who are bigots who are also wonderful writers. Artists and writers are subcategories of human, and so are racists/sexists/homophobes. There’s bound to be overlap.
Thanks to Stumble! I found this great discussion. Evers and KGS are both taking sides that when finally distilled are “extreme”. Homophobia is wrong and the institutionalized practice of it turns gays and lesbians into second class citizens. This has nothing to do with whether or not OSC is a good author and has had a positive impact on young peoples lives through his work. I see many people trying to defend Christians of the US as not homophobic and that is just plain blind. If you just look at the raw statistical data from voter turnout and how they voted it is easy to see that more than half of Christians either don’t want gays and lesbians to have equal rights or just don’t care enough about their fellow citizens to get out and vote to oppose their own religious leaders initiatives when they get put on the ballot. Yes there are christian groups that are welcoming and not all thus not all christians hold the same views on homosexuality but the majority do.
JC I think you hit on an interesting comment there “Most amazing human being” Human Being … where does it say that as he has less right to being human with all the morals, values, and prejudices that go with it.
The very act of being human opens us to being prejudiced. Me, I’m not prejudiced against gays or african americans or even asians. Im prejudiced against extremists of any view and i can tall you that Card isnt. He has a right to his own view point and no amount of slagging the guy on these sorts of sites is going to change it.
In no way does he represent the homphobic people in his books. In fact he is one of a very few authors that will even include them in his writing in order to be fair.
Perhaps people should go hassle those authors who refuse to write on the topic while at the same time intemating that they are non prejudiced against something that in most cases is caused by nature not nurture.
And really people have any of you read his book? How could you call it homophobic? next you’ll be calling him a teacher of paedophiles because the children run round naked.
I’m not going to read all the comments to see whether my views about this have been expressed, but I’d just like to say that I love ever book I’ve read by OSC. His views are wrong and bigoted, but he is still an amazing writer.
Remember when men were men, women were women and homosexuals were perverts? The world has changed for the worse.
To be frank, what does it matter what the personal views of an author are, so long as they don’t shove them down your throats in the books? If I’d never read this, I never would have known about OSC’s views, as they are nowhere to be found in the books. Actually, I always thought the books were very balanced, particularly on the topic of religion.
Oh NO! Card has an opinion! And it doesn’t conform with yours! How DARE he!
I read Ender’s Game and a few other OS Card books, including the first few of the ‘Alvin Maker’ series. I was so convinced that Card was writing about lesbian/gay people using the ‘knack’ as a pretty straightforward metaphor. I did some digging to find out if Orson Scott Card was gay – that is how deeply his description of those who were forced to hide their ‘knack’ from religious leaders seemed to echo my own experience of being gay. Well, you all know the rest of the story. Not only did I find out that OSC is not gay, he is virulently homophobic. I couldn’t read his books any more. It felt like trying to eat lunch in a house where I was clearly not wanted or welcome.
It’s a pity how a mind can be so clear and vibrant in one area and so dark, backward and mean in another.
[…] about homosexuality are out of sync with the positions on diversity shared by most libraries. As I posted earlier, in 2008, there is a major distinction between buying books that readers want to read and uplifting an author […]
OSC is such a hypocrite. He advocates laws against homosexuality but have you noticed his writing? Card is a tottal pedophile. (Not comparing pedophelia with homosexuality, just how he is so against “sexual deviation”)all of his work, Enders Game? They are all about young boys, being over powered by older men. There’s even a fairly erotic scene where two boys strip naked and fight in the shower.
OSC needs to shut his mouth about crap he doesn’t understand and get a shrink to sort out his little boy lust.