So one of my favorite authors decided to voice his opinions on a social issue that has been thrust into the spotlight for the past several years.
Orson Scott Card on gay marriage.
He treats this issue with all of the care, dignity, and respect that you would expect from one of the more skilled authors currently alive today.
And by care, dignity, and respect I mean he poured a giant bucket of crazy all over a page. And then danced around it widdershins. Naked, while covered in blue paint.
I’m going to address some of his more, for lack of a better word, fanciful claims.
He claims that this signals the end of democracy, that by ruling in favor of gay marriage the courts are over-ruling popular vote.
California and Massachusetts had ruling that anti-gay marriage laws violated their state constitutions. Neither state has been able to get an amendment through to change the constitution to ban such marriage. Sounds to me like this “majority” doesn’t mind gay marriage so much.
He also goes on to claim that it’s absurd for the definition of marriage to be changed, when it has historically meant one thing only throughout human history. Which is true.
Unless you count the Middle East. And Asia. And North America before the Europeans showed up. Or you know, the Mormons.
Because I’m sure no one could find any way that the Mormon’s marriages have worked differently than the majority of society, at any point in their history.
(BTW Mr. Card is a Mormon, for the record.)
He then goes on to bring up the slippery slope argument, by showing how bad legalized abortion has turned out. Y’know other that the reduction in human suffering, and nationwide drop in crime.
“At first, it was only early abortions; within a few years, though, any abortion up to the killing of a viable baby in mid-birth was made legal.”
I suspect that the problem here is that me and Mr. Card are defining abortion slightly differently. I’m going with the definitions as laid down by modern medicine, and he’s decided to run with the popular “Shit someone made up” theory.
He also complains that the courts have banned free speech over the issue. Specifically that people are not allowed to pray outside of these clinics.
To describe the behavior of anti-abortion activists as “prayer” seems like a slight distortion of actual events to me. And by slight distortion I mean it’s a great big pile of fertilizer. Which will then be taken home, mixed with diesel fuel, and then returned to the clinic. Trying to threaten, coerce, and scare people into doing what you want isn’t acceptable in our society, no matter how many nice words you dress it up in to feel better about yourself for essentially being a low-life that likes to pick fights with pregnant women.
I could tell you all that I love toasting marshmallows. And I could make a giant wooden letter “t” to stand for the word toasting and symbolize my love. And then I could tell you that I wish to share this symbol of marshmallowy goodness with the nice black family down the street.
But if I stuck that letter t in their yard and lit it on fire, I don’t think anyone would question my subsequent arrest. No matter how many damn marshmallows I brought.
So I guess where I am going with this rant is the following:
When it comes to sci-fi, Orson Scott Card is an awesome fiction author. But when it comes to social issues, he’s still an awesome fiction author.
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