Orson Scott Card will kill your nerd-boner

I read and did a lot of nerdy shit in high school. I read Animorphs, watched every Monty Python movie until I had every line down, and even tried to read Lord of the Rings. I say “tried” because, holy shit, I’m pretty sure that book is 50 percent umlauts and weird, inscrutable names.

But I never read Ender’s Game. I had friends who did and they raved endlessly about it. I couldn’t give a shit. For some reason, I figured it was just Tron for tweens, although that may have been based mostly on the cover artwork. Feel free to tell me how wrong I am in the comments section, but first, read these comments from Orson Scott Card about how there are no longer any laws that hinder queer people and we should all be fine with inequal rights:

There’s no need to legalize gay marriage. I have plenty of gay friends who are committed couples; some of them call themselves married, some don’t, but their friends treat them as married. Anybody who doesn’t like it just doesn’t hang out with them.

It’s just like heterosexual couples who are living together without marriage. Their friends still treat them like married couples, inviting them places together; they’re a social unit. Those who strongly disapprove leave them alone.

There are no laws left standing that discriminate against gay couples. They can visit each other in the hospital. They can benefit from each other’s insurance.

No, legalizing gay marriage is not about making it possible for gay people to become couples.

It’s about giving the left the power to force anti-religious values on our children. Once they legalize gay marriage, it will be the bludgeon they use to make sure that it becomes illegal to teach traditional values in the schools.

First off, does anyone else find it almost perversely fitting that a science fiction writer would put that much stock in the Bible? Too fucking easy, I swear to God. Anyway, where was I? Ah, yes, Orson Scott Card is full of shit. Look, I get that he’s a respected author, but being able to write sci-fi well doesn’t translate into being a historical scholar on the subject of marriage. Especially when you consider that marital laws extend only to legal institutions, rather than religious ones. Not to mention the fact that actual science, rather than the make-believe shit he writes, has been rather conclusive in its stance that homosexuality is a natural part of humanity. This is all to say that books are great for a read, but not as a basis for deciding who has rights and who doesn’t.

 

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