There is a phenomenon which occurs whenever a society experiences a period of radical sociopolitical change that entails the public scrutiny of the ideas of certain artists and other characters of note.

Often, when a given individual is unable or unwilling either to abide by certain new principles or to renounce long-held principles and values which do not mesh with those of the recently changed or changing social landscape, the works of said individual are publicly denounced.

My point is thus: The fact that Orson Scott Card is unwilling to alter or pretend to alter his own long-held belief that homosexual love and homosexual marriage should not be considered standard practices in American society should not detract from the value of his written works.

To those of you who do not enjoy Card’s books simply because you believe they are not appreciable examples of science fiction literature I would say that, while I disagree with you, I know that certain things appeal to certain people and that my appraisal of his books should by no means dictate or influence your own.

However, to those who, in light of Card’s personal beliefs, would forsake a book or series they admired prior to discovering that their author disagreed with them, I offer this word of caution: Suppose that in the course of future human events society never stagnates; that it keeps changing and shifting and remaking itself for as long as mankind remains on the earth. If such a thing were to happen, and a number of each generation’s artists and thinkers and achievers were to subsequently become unpopular and their works be forsaken accordingly, just how severely would our understanding of art and science and literature and religion and philosophy be limited in, say, one-hundred years? Five hundred? A thousand? How strongly might our descendents wish, in that distant time, that their predecessors had striven to judge a book or painting or sonata or idea by the value of the thing itself, rather than the level to which its originator adhered to the social whims of their community during the hundred-year span in which they lived and died?

I would ask that any who would renounce their love of Orson Scott Card’s books because they no longer love Orson Scott Card consider that, prior to learning his stance on the public acceptance of homosexuality, they were perfectly happy to admire and support the same man simply because they enjoyed his books. This is another habit that I would warn against.

Let the value of a thing be wholly contained and concerned with the thing itself. If you find it agreeable and appreciable based on its own merits, then your opinion of the originator should not take away from that.

I just don’t get it. If you don’t like it, then don’t do it. What the fuck is with America and its penchant for pushing personal beliefs on everyone else? (And it ain’t just “conservative” douchenozzles, everybody does it.)

Someone recently said to me that he wonders if America needs to do the full totalitarian to learn its lesson, suggesting that we secretly want it because we don’t yet know what it really means. I think he’s right, and i can see it everything from this issue of a guy with chin pubes and a white suit hating homosexuals to the anti-smoking campaigns. It was obvious in the Prohibition of alcohol and just as obvious in the War on Drugs.

America, dreaming of totalitarianism but too chickenshit to take the plunge.

I nominate We the People for the next Asshat of the Month Award…

I’d like to thank you for your thoughtful comments. Let me take a moment to explain why I think that some of your fundamental premises are dead wrong.

1. I believe the evidence strongly supports the contention that people are generally afraid of “otherness.” This appears to be hard-wired in. People have neo-cortexes, though, and can override such nonsense … and need to do so. In addition, there is much evidence to indicate that individual/cultural adaptation levels have a great deal of influence on people’s willingness to accept otherness. Those most exposed to otherness are the ones most likely to accept it over time. This is demonstrated by the fact that the areas of the country most adamantly opposed to homosexuals also tend to be the most rural, where many people live in areas where they have never been exposed to gay men and women.

So, your premise, that it is in-your-face homosexuality that causes the backlash would seem not to hold a lot of water over the long-term. In the short-term, there is support for what you say from McClellan’s research into adaptation levels and tipping points.

2. I was there for the civil rights movement, and I can tell you that it was not the Black Panthers that caused the backlash. Far from it. The most violent confrontations were aimed at peaceful marchers. Meeting socially was not an option. Actually, I laughed out loud at that. The idea that the answer to the racist South was to befriend and the like is so …. well, you had to have been there. A black man who tried to be friends with most white men where I grew up would be very lucky to survive. The solution applied to the South was the only solution with a prayer of working, and it did after a fashion.

3. I’m not pro-gay. I just think live and let live should be the US motto.

4. Your idea of legislated moral limits … well, you didn’t mean those to apply to gays, did you? Bestiality and pedophilia are dead wrong because there can be no mutual consent. I think consent is the issue with all sexual morality laws.

BTW, I have known men who boasted openly about having sex with mules, sheep, and chickens. I worked two summer with them in my rural, Southern county.

All of them hated homosexuals.

Go figure.

Ubertramp and JT, as I said, nature is not politically correct, and life isn’t always fair. Sorry but thems the rules.

Hey I wonder if their is such a thing as a beastiophobe? Chuckle.

About your comments on other races. That’s funny as it kind of proves my point, “otherness” is naturally met with by resistance. Does that make it right, no, but that’s the way it is. And where races, no matter which ones, attempt to force their particular race only agenda on others that is usually met with by equal resistance. Shouting “Black Power!” was met with cries of “White Power!”. Where races integrate and engage socially, befriend rather than confront the majority they tend to be more accepted. The problem is that it takes some patience and insight into human psychology. When obvious discrimination is occuring the automatic (and justifiable) reaction is to react. Force is met with force. African Americans were finally afforded civil rights in the sixties, yet while equality was officially sanctioned it did nothing to change the minds or hearts of those who hate them simply because of their skin color. But with time, and perhaps the demise of groups like the Black Panthers has brought them to a more just place. And today we have a black President, and the world is breathing a breath of fresh air. Still I suspect that racism will always be with us, it’s unfortunately natural (unless one is personally raised with the other races). Birds of a feather and all that.

I remember my young daughter, about five at the time I think, telling me that she didn’t like black people. I asked her why as this might be an interesting study in how people become prejudiced and her answer was that she didn’t know why except that they looked different. I used the opportunity to tell her, it was probably a paraphrase of MLK, that we should not judge someone by the color of their skin but by the content of their character, and I have attempted to reinforce that along the way and now she understands.

Back to gays, you said that “men who had the most violently “repulsed” reactions to male homosexual porn also had the most movement in their erectile tissue when watching it”. I would suggest then that those are people with issues, perhaps they are closet homosexuals yet fearful to admit that to themselves because of what they fear it might mean, that they re bad people as they were taught in their Sunday schools in childhood. Kind of like that nutty guy in the movie American Beauty.

Today it is PC to be all for homosexuals, people falling all over themselves to show that they are more pro-gay than the next person. Yet I suspect that lots of the people paying lip service to gays are also not being completely honest with themselves. That’s not a healthy state to be in.

Should their be legislated moral limits? In extreme cases yes, where one is a victim. One can be a seeming willing participant and still be a victim as in cases where one in the party is way underage and may not be using their full faculties. Other things are simply so far out there that you’re going to have a really hard time getting people to accept it as OK. Bestiality is an example. Yet if you look hard enough you’ll probably find some group that wants equal rights for that. I daresay most people would have a natural yuck factor at the thought of sex with a mule. Most, but not all.

http://wonkette.com/408277/secessionist-mule-raping-georgia-governor-candidate-would-also-kill-own-son-for-liberty

The point of all this, beastiality aside, is that, again, you cannot legislate away or guilt away natural inclinations and feelings, homosexual or heterosexual. To attempt to do so only engenders internal resentment which may well come back to bite you.

Oxy-moron. Inherent.

I wish you had addressed my parallel about whether or not repulsion/fear of the “other” as evidenced by racial differences should, because it’s natural, mean that African-Americans should just endure prejudice, presumably without complaint.

I don’t think the nurture argument I made works against me at all. The argument I made was societal in nature and therefore one of the superego. It has nothing to do with schools, families, or other individual contacts.

As for heterosexuals being innately repulsed by homosexual ideas, I most certainly do not agree. I’m as het as anyone I know. I’ve seen gay porn. I wasn’t repulsed at all. I was bored. I have seen a study (and I couldn’t locate it quickly on google) in which men who had the most violently “repulsed” reactions to male homosexual porn also had the most movement in their erectile tissue when watching it. That would suggest that their repulsion wasn’t to the subject matter itself, but to their own feelings as seen through a frowning, societal lens.

As for your social studies teacher in college (your college really had a class called “social studies???” Did it also have a class called “recess”?), he just sounds like a common asshole. Do you really take the act of a common asshole and apply it to all members of a group from which that asshole came?

To refine my above hypothesis, I believe that the average heterosexual man and woman is innately repulsed at the idea of having sex with one of their own gender, it invokes what I’d call the “yuck factor”. Thus to have it thrown in their faces is probably not an aid in tolerance.

As for scientific studies, while I could look and possibly find something on it in psychological nomenclature were I to dig deep enough, just as I might on why heterosexual men are strangely turned on by homosexual women and visa versa (what is the evolutionary survival reason?) – it would probably be a expentiture in time that I can’t afford just to prove a point on this website. Perhaps no such study exists due to the fact that, not being politically correct, it would arouse a lot of antagonism. I suspect that scientists, like the rest of us, would prefer to find safer avenues of study when availiable. Thus, for now I’ll relegate this as just my personal opinion.

JSO, the nurture argument can work against you. Many heterosexual parents have been foresquare against openly homosexual teachers in schools, especially elementary schools, for the reason that they believe that their influence as “authorities” could twist the natural inclination of their children toward the opposite sex to something the teacher wants.

I once had a gay social studies teacher in college who began teaching from his very first day that homosexuality was more natural than heterosexuality – the latter, he taught, was actually the abberation. I was turned off by this transparent using of his office to promote a political agenda and spurious notion as fact so I withdrew after a couple of classes. He asked why I wanted to drop out so I politely told him that I didn’t agree with his philosophy. He got angry and, I later found out, refused to document the withdraw. Instead when grades time rolled around I found that he failed me, so I had to go through a lengthly process to prove that I actually only attended a couple of classes and did indeed legitimately withdraw. Did this incident create the belief I’ve stated above about repellancy, no, but they probably hardened them some.

Yeah, and even if you did such a study, it would be hard, if not impossible, to control for self-selection or, for that matter, to measure the degree of social pressure.

I’m going to stick with “overwhelmingly.” I can’t prove it, of course. No one can. But I think the highest probability is that those who are willing to risk substantial public scorn, economic hardship, and even jail time, or worse, in order to engage in homosexual behavior are probably driven by something more basic and immediate than light preference. I suppose my hypothesis, though unstated above, is that in a society like that of classical Greece, where homosexuality among men was idealized, those who engaged only in heterosexual behavior were most likely strongly heterosexual by nature. And it would stand to reason that engaging in homosexual behavior in a society where that behavior is strongly stigmatized and even punished would require a strong drive most likely explained by nature.

But, as I said, I have no proof.