Orson Scott Card doesn't like gay marriage

Those who read science fiction will probably have read some of Orson Scott Card's books. I've read a few, but wasn't way keen on any apart from "A Planet Called Treason".

In his spare time, he's a conservative writer who writes a lot on Mormon topics. Here's his latest offering, on the topic of gay marriage:

( State job is not to redefine marriage )

Card is definitely more than a little nutty. There are so many instances of faulty thinking, poor logic, and a desire to control the private practises of others that I hardly know where to start in commenting on it. Look at some of these excerpts, for example:

There is no branch of government with the authority to redefine marriage. Marriage is older than government. Its meaning is universal: It is the permanent or semipermanent bond between a man and a woman, establishing responsibilities between the couple and any children that ensue.

Now bear in mind that Card is a very active member of the the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which until 1890 practised polygamous marriages, until forced to stop by a law redefining marriage. Is anyone seeing the irony here?

The laws concerning marriage did not create marriage, they merely attempted to solve problems in such areas as inheritance, property, paternity, divorce, adoption and so on.

Well, duh. So, should there not be laws that solve these same problems in the case of gay relationships?

There were a whole bunch of comments on his article at Speaker-For-Himself. I especially liked this one:

As someone said, I think in some ways these closet cases are actually reasoning pretty rationally, they just start from false premises. The reasoning seems to go something like this:

• I am a normal heterosexual guy


• I constantly crave cock and only have sex with my wife due to social pressure


• Without that social pressure, all us normal heterosexual men would ditch our wives and head straight for the gay bathhouses


• Therefore, strong social (and legal) pressure is necessary for the human race to keep reproducing

You can see how it makes sense to them.
posted by TheophileEscargot at 12:01 AM on July 30

More Starship Troopers

A couple of things I forgot to mention that I liked from the movie Starship Troopers:

• An absolutely superb score from Basil Poledouris. But then, how many of his scores weren't good?


• It was the first movie I remember seeing where the spaceships seemed to have the right mass and inertia. I though the spaceship scenes were generally very good.