bluewaterrider
Senior Member
Originally posted by -Pr-
Guys, this thread isn't about gay rights or gay marriage; this is about your opinion of Orson Scott Card. Can we please keep it to that?
Pr, you are right to call for a return to topic when people have veered so far the name Roman Polanski is not only cropping up but supplanting the main topic.
You are not, however, on such solid ground by asking that this thread avoid any mention of gay rights or gay marriage.
That issue, and especially how it interplays with religion in America, is precisely what people are BASING their opinion of Orson Scott Card ON.
If there's no issue with gay rights or gay marriage, there's no reason for anyone to have a problem with Orson Card, he is just another writer.
On the other hand, Orson Card isn't getting, and did not develop his views, in any vacuum. By and large he is not being treated fairly; he is being judged for statements made over 20 years ago, when America itself was a vastly different place.
The original poster asked if people can separate the writer from his work. As the thread is showing, some cannot. For Q99 and Style, the fact that Card made what is, in their minds, a transgression 20 years ago, is ample justification for boycotting him now, depriving Scott Card of work. The man who wrote the article in the link himself speaks against this, warning that people are going to the extreme of showing Card discrimination in turn.
All this despite that very few people have actually read what Scott Card wrote, let alone in its proper context.
Even in the purely secular world, there are people that hold to Card's view that marriage is between a man and a woman.
Thomas Sowell, well-known economist, is one of these.
So were, and perhaps still are, the voters of California.
So too the voters of at least 30 other states.
Card is not alone, and that's just looking at mainstream America, which votes quite a bit differently than the way polls often suggest they will on this issue; to note the surprise of those who witnessed Proposition 8's outcome.
And, again, that is the secular world.
Which Orson Scott Card, being Mormon, is not fully part of.
Card cannot be properly understood or represented fairly in a non-religious context. It'd be like talking of Martin Luther King, Jr, and not understanding that King was a Christian, or Malcolm X and not understanding that Malcolm was a Muslim and what being Muslim meant to Malcolm.
In point of fact, it is the Mormon church itself that is pro-marriage, pro-traditional marriage and decidedly against anything that violates that. Charges of polygamy do not withstand this basic fact; the Mormon church teaches its followers that marriage is between a man and a woman, something the posters in this thread do not truly seem to understand. It would not be possible for Card to be a part of the Mormon community, which is noted for being quite activist, and truly hold the views the Mormon Books and leadership teach, and be anything other than a supporter of traditional marriage.
That point needs to be made, perhaps until people understand it; and it also needs to be pointed out that Card's activism is scarcely more extraordinary than that which ANY member of the Mormon Community is encouraged to display; whether individual Mormons do or not.
Discussion of such matters as these is hardly off-topic.