An open letter to Orson Scott Card

Mr. Card,

It is with great interest that I read your Civilization Watch article that appeared following the reelection of President Obama. I was most interested in your opinion, because, frankly, I cannot fathom how someone who has written one of the most treasured works of science fiction can be so absolutist and projecting most ferociously your own faults onto President Obama. I would also like to speak to you about certain opinions that are, being most sincere in my honesty, destined to condemn you to self imposed obscurity. Your right to hold these opinions is not in dispute: the innate quality of them, however, most definitely are.

I

Your opinions regarding same sex marriage should not be condemned automatically. I am Canadian, where we have had same sex marriage for the better part of a decade and I would defend to the end the right of homosexuals to marry; however, I would not disrespect your religious beliefs which you hold so strongly. I do not understand them, I do not share them, but I will concede that you can hold them and not wish ill will upon a homosexual. Opposing same sex marriage legislation is in my mind a horrible mistake, but I will no doubt that you can do so and truly not possess any malice in your heart.

I daresay that your grasp of the same sex marriage isue is at the level of an obnoxious child.

I would like to state the goals of the same sex marriage movement: to bestow upon homosexual couples the equal dignity of marriage that heterosexual couples have; to allow for homosexual partners to have equal access to their partner's medical benefits and medical insurance; to recieve spousal benefits that heterosexual couples enjoy. Furthermore, to protect from harassment and violence of adolescents who are developing an understanding of their sexual identities.

It is an imperfect process, to be sure. Immoderate and unreasonable people within the movement are trying to shout down the opposing side. However, assuming that by enlarging the circle of values we have to include people whose behaviour you disagree with and rationalize that its proponents are doing it out of hatred for traditional values and those who hold them---that is inexcusable. Contemptible behaviour by a few is not an excuse to decry the aspirations of the many.

Your response to a government that would sanction homosexual couples to wed is, in your utterly disgenious words: "Regardless of law, marriage has only one definition, and any government that attempts to change it is my mortal enemy. I will act to destroy that government and bring it down, so it can be replaced with a government that will respect and support marriage, and help me raise my children in a society where they will expect to marry in their turn. Only when the marriage of heterosexuals has the support of the whole society can we have our best hope of raising each new generation to aspire to continue our civilization.."

Your attempt to "contextualize" this statement is appallling to the intellect. I am disappointed to be unable to find a copy online of the article in which these words appear, in high likelihood that the publishers have deleted it out of sheer embarssment.

In your recent novella "Hamlet's Father" it has been reported that you have written a very skewed work of fiction regarding same sex relationships, and I think that your attempts to reply to your critics are utterly, utterly disingenous.

To wit: "But the lie is this, that "the focus is primarily on linking homosexuality with ... pedophilia." The focus isn't primarily on this because there is no link whatsoever between homosexuality and pedophilia in this book. Hamlet's father, in the book, is a pedophile, period. I don't show him being even slightly attracted to adults of either sex. It is the reviewer, not me, who has asserted this link, which I would not and did not make."

From your essay Homosexual Marriage and Civilization:

"The dark secret of homosexual society—the one that dares not speak its name—is how many homosexuals first entered into that world through a disturbing seduction or rape or molestation or abuse, and how many of them yearn to get out of the homosexual community and live normally"

These are your words, sir.

II

I would like to address now your most recent Civilization Watch article. Namely, the self righteous sense of fury that you extend to homosexuals extends to the Obama government and the media. You attribute Obama's victory to the machinations of the media, who allegedly duped the American people by unfairly highlighting the good deeds of Obama while overplaying the mistakes of the Bush administration.
  "If Barack Obama had a propaganda minister with the power to shut you down if you ran stories that embarrassed him or his administration, would your station, your network, your newspaper, your magazine still be in business?   If America had a Joseph Goebbels who would arrest any journalist who reported anything that would make the administration look bad, did you write or say or report anything during this election campaign that would have put you inside a jail cell?   Everybody at Fox News would have been jailed, and Fox News would have been shut down. But you already do everything you can to get people not to listen to Fox, so the actions of such a propaganda minister would merely make official what you already try to accomplish by other means.

Don't you dare say I'm lying or exaggerating, because the Democrats did try to shut down conservative talk radio, and you supported them in that effort, allowing them to get away with calling the proposed action "fairness."


In your preferred source for News, Fox News, Barack Obama states the Fairness Doctrine is not now, nor has it ever been, an objective of his government. I am reluctant to include any news postings from the internet about Congressional Democrats, at least, from any news sources I do not consider to be anything but hopelessly prejudiced. I do not have the luxury of selecting my sources based on my convictions.


"But far more likely is the other alternative -- that, faced with your monolithic groupthink, your insistent flacking for the Beloved Leader, your dishonesty that is equal to his dishonesty, your emulation of Pravda, the Republicans in Congress will give up, Fox News will drop the story, it will all go away, and the Beloved Leader will continue in power.   Then, when his appeasement of our enemies results in a nuclear explosion in Tel Aviv ...   When more and more Al-Qaeda-style attacks kill more Jews and more Americans around the world ...   When Obama's incompetent and anti-scientific economic policies have the consequences that such policies always have, and the American economy collapses under the weight of debts and entitlements ...   When Obama's crushing policies result in American healthcare sinking to the low level of service, the endless waiting lists, the needless death and suffering in the name of "fairness" that already afflict Europeans and Canadians ...   When the burden of ever-steeper taxes moves capital and industry and innovation to other countries ...

Will you step forward and take responsibility, and say, "We should have known; in fact we did know, but we did not tell you"?

I do not relish having to explain to a multiple award winning author what the Slippery Slope fallacy is. I also find it hilarious for you to lecture the allegedly liberal media about hyperbole and misinformation when you have so much on display (to wit). Everything you attribute to Obama has been done by the Republican Party, particularly debt and outsourcing everything in the American economy that isn't nailed down. But all that is covered by the liberal media, isn't it? The vengeful, biased mainstream media. You don't want to be "misled" by the liberal media, so you would rather hear from true, real Americans? Right?

I consider your inability to be receptive to anything other than conservative media and arguments to be a major failing---and you can throw in my face any accusation that I am doing the same, preferring strictly liberal sources of information. Fine. So be it. I actually expect it. Let the first stone fly.

 Your article is a frenzied tantrum of a man unable to conceptualize a positive way to interact with the larger world.

For that you have my pity.

III

Mr. Card, you are living in self imposed isolation. You risk destroying your aritistic reputation and legacy. I am neither the first nor the last person to be disappointed with you. Ender's Game is a landmark in science fiction. I have enjoyed it every since I was eleven---my first "grown up" science fiction novel. I would like to thank you, sir. At a time when I needed it you provided me with the first step into the larger science fiction genre. The praise for that is inexpressable. But I must be realistic about Orson Scott Card the author of Ender's Game and Orson Scott Card the author of jeremiads and polemics.

I haven't decided whether or not to see the Ender's Game movie coming out next year. I don't wish to support the National Organization for Marriage. I do not wish to interfere in the private lives of others. But I am confident in 2016, when the Republican Party (assuming it survives the brutal civil war that will follow this election) will be forced to make a choice between pragmitism and your branch of outrageous politics, you will be disappointed.

I am not asking you to change your opinions out of an attempt to enforce intellectual conformity. What you must do, I am afraid, is to adjust your manner and patterns of thinking. For the past decade you have not only been swimming against the tide of history, but justifying with with utterly disgusting arguments and alarmist rhetoric. You are increasingly unable to take seriously. You risk alienating a new generation from enjoying your classic work, and that is not fair to art. As an individual, not so much.

You can denounce me as another brainwashed left of centre useful idiot. I won't throw any gauntlets down demanding you change your opinions. I doubt I alone can accomplish that.That is your buisness. I have said my piece.

Sincerley,

Ian Cordingley