The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Gasp! ‘Nerdgasm’ Spoiled by Discovery of Homophobia Behind ‘Ender’s Game’?

Posted on | November 2, 2013 | 88 Comments

One of the most annoying habits of liberals is their tendency to confuse their political agenda with moral virtue.

It’s never about the efficacy of policy with them. Instead, it’s about voting your way to Heaven: Blessed are those who vote Democrat, for they shall be called the children of Gaia, or something.

So . . . homophobia.

Why is it that (a) opposition to specific policy ideas is routinely conflated with (b) irrational fear and hatred of homosexuals? And why do liberals have to run around pointing the finger of accusation at others, even where no one is remotely in danger of discrimination?

Consider the new movie Ender’s Game, which co-blogger Wombat briefly reviewed earlier. My general antipathy for science fiction aside, I only rarely go out to see movies, and therefore don’t really much care what’s playing at the shopping-mall multiplex.

Perpetual adolescents, however, can’t let go of their childishness, and the first thing you should know about Huffington Post contributor Seth Taylor is that he’s a 43-year-old dude who wears his baseball cap backward, a la every Gen X slacker circa 1993.

If I were wearing shiny polyester shirts, bell-bottoms and platform shoes, I could scarcely be more ridiculously obsolete.

The second thing you should know about Seth Taylor is that he divorced the mother of his child and “came out,” and brandishes his Gay Dad badge like it was the Congressional Medal of Honor, and he’s going to question your patriotism if you don’t salute.

Just wanted to make clear who we’re dealing with here before I share with you Seth Taylor’s bizarre reaction to Ender’s Game:

Last fall, I read a press release announcing that Hollywood was finally making an Ender’s Game movie. I proceeded to have an immediate nerdgasm.
But shortly after the movie announcement was released to the far corners of the Internet, I started seeing more news stories, unexpected ones, about [Ender’s Game author Orson Scott] Card himself, and the fact that he’s widely reputed to be a major bigot. More specifically: a big-time homophobe.
Thanks to the magic of the Internet, several articles and statements have emerged since then, all authored by Card over the years. In a 1990 article, Card postulated about the dangerous “homosexual agenda.” In 2004, he claimed that gay people are the result of child abuse and molestation, and that gay marriage will never count as “real marriage.” And in 2008, he wrote an article for the Mormon Times, arguing that gay marriage will result in the end of American democracy.

Dude, it’s a science fiction movie.

If we all started requiring political litmus tests on cultural products — songs, books, movies, TV shows — what would pass the test? I mean, what if conservatives went back to the Golden Age of Hollywood and started denouncing every movie where the screenwriter or director was subsequently exposed as a Commie or a fellow traveler? Crap, even Ronald Reagan himself couldn’t pass that test, given how he signed up for certain Commie front groups back in the day.

What Seth Taylor unwittingly reveals is how the gay-rights agenda is less about policy than it is about compulsory approval.

There can be only one opinion about homosexuality, namely, whatever opinion Official Gay Leaders™ consider acceptable.

It’s very much akin to the way the NAACP arrogates to itself the authority to dictate acceptable opinions on race or, for that matter, the way certain Official Climate Scientists™ consider it their prerogative to declare the scientific truth about global warming.

Is this kind of Cultural Marxist thought-control stuff  “the end of American democracy”? Call me a hater, but maybe you can see why I’m not prepared to say Orson Scott Card was entirely wrong.

 

Comments

88 Responses to “Gasp! ‘Nerdgasm’ Spoiled by Discovery of Homophobia Behind ‘Ender’s Game’?”

  1. MrEvilMatt
    November 2nd, 2013 @ 10:54 am

    Gasp! ‘Nerdgasm’ Spoiled by Discovery of Homophobia Behind ‘Ender’s Game’?: One of the most annoying habits of… http://t.co/kcONtF7hix

  2. CHideout
    November 2nd, 2013 @ 10:54 am

    Gasp! ‘Nerdgasm’ Spoiled by Discovery of Homophobia Behind ‘Ender’s Game’?: One of the most annoying habits of… http://t.co/2j6wwAYkHx

  3. Lockestep1776
    November 2nd, 2013 @ 10:54 am

    Gasp! ‘Nerdgasm’ Spoiled by Discovery of Homophobia Behind ‘Ender’s Game’?: One of the most annoying habits of… http://t.co/lu1OX64Pf7

  4. Resista38176897
    November 2nd, 2013 @ 10:54 am

    Gasp! ‘Nerdgasm’ Spoiled by Discovery of Homophobia Behind ‘Ender’s Game’?: One of the most annoying habits of… http://t.co/6d4Mb8xrUm

  5. Citzcom
    November 2nd, 2013 @ 10:54 am

    Gasp! ‘Nerdgasm’ Spoiled by Discovery of Homophobia Behind ‘Ender’s Game’?: One of the most annoying habits of… http://t.co/3z9jmqlNzV

  6. jwbrown1969
    November 2nd, 2013 @ 10:54 am

    Gasp! ‘Nerdgasm’ Spoiled by Discovery of Homophobia Behind ‘Ender’s Game’?: One of the most annoying habits of… http://t.co/WwsbbESDcr

  7. niceninja
    November 2nd, 2013 @ 10:55 am

    RT @commonpatriot: via @rsmccain: Gasp! ‘Nerdgasm’ Spoiled by Discovery of Homophobia Behind ‘Ender’s Game’? http://t.co/ESiVM7LYom #tcot

  8. thatMrGguy
    November 2nd, 2013 @ 10:59 am

    Gasp! ‘Nerdgasm’ Spoiled by Discovery of Homophobia Behind ‘Ender’s Game’? http://t.co/OSoJo2etxS

  9. Mike G.
    November 2nd, 2013 @ 11:00 am

    Orson Scott Card is absolutely right.

  10. rsmccain
    November 2nd, 2013 @ 11:00 am

    Gasp! ‘Nerdgasm’ Spoiled by Discovery of Homophobia Behind ‘Ender’s Game’? http://t.co/oEvu7qQqVO cc @orsonscottcard #tcot

  11. Thinking Americanist
    November 2nd, 2013 @ 11:01 am

    Gay with a kid eh? How long will it be, before he molests that child? it is to wonder.

  12. robertstacymccain
    November 2nd, 2013 @ 11:04 am

    Uh, he’s got a daughter, so maybe you can rule that out.

  13. TomKattman
    November 2nd, 2013 @ 11:05 am

    RT @rsmccain: Gasp! ‘Nerdgasm’ Spoiled by Discovery of Homophobia Behind ‘Ender’s Game’? http://t.co/oEvu7qQqVO cc @orsonscottcard #tcot

  14. Unix-Jedi
    November 2nd, 2013 @ 11:06 am

    Should be “Homophobia”.

    But yes, Card’s quite outspoken with his religion.

    Bet you missed the SWFA kerfluffle this summer.

    What it demonstrated was to be any sort of non-Progressive Democrat and have that be known, there is one – and only one – publishing house that will take you as a client. (The best one, Baen, which I thought before knowing that.)

    Baen has members of the Communist Party writing for them and will happily publish you if they (Since Jim Baen died a few years back) think you’ll sell. And they’ve been selling a lot. (Plus, also innovating/jumpstarting the no-DRM e-book revolution).

    http://larrycorreia.wordpress.com/2013/07/10/mike-williamson-on-sfwa-a-really-good-post/

    http://larrycorreia.wordpress.com/2013/07/13/ballad-of-the-sfwa-facists-by-steven-brust/

    http://www.michaelzwilliamson.com/blog/item/sfwa–boldly-snatching-obscurity-from-the-jaws-of-relevance

    http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2013/07/09/alas-sfwa/

    (Funny thing, how often Hoyt and Williamson were called names presuming they were white, “Americans”.)

    What Seth Taylor unwittingly reveals is how the gay-rights agenda is less about policy than it is about compulsory approval.

    Sadly, yes, and how obvious that is is staggering. You can’t quietly disagree, you must publicly pronounce the Correct Opinion.

    Or anything is fair game. (But the reverse – forcing a “liberal” to parrot something they don’t agree with (even if/especially if it’s math and by definition – is beyond the pale of civilized society.

    It’s the mentality of entitled children.

  15. gates of vienna
    November 2nd, 2013 @ 11:08 am

    I deliberately avoid ‘backgrounders’ on authors I like, and even more so their particular books. “Ender’s Game” is a great book for boys from ten on up. I mean, it’s suitable for anyone, but it is especially appropriate for boys, those second-class citizens who are constantly demeaned by the “girls rool” mantra.
    I have given EG to numbers of boys, even the ones who hate to read. The Hate Reading group is just as enthralled as the others and always come back to talk about the ways in which Ender triumphs in a harsh environment.
    BTW, there are Orson Scott Card books I *won’t* read, because of the disturbing thematic content. But that’s just me. Can’t read much of Stephen King for that reason either.
    The collectivist mentality that insists on vetting an author’s p.c. credentials is just another example of the third rate intellects our government schools (including many of the private ones, havens of collectivism) continue to churn out.

  16. gates of vienna
    November 2nd, 2013 @ 11:11 am

    BTW, agree with you on movies. Besides the cost, there’s the time investment. They’ve become uninteresting, except perhaps for some of the early Dream Works-type novelties, which showed off what they can do now with ‘special effects’.

  17. Unix-Jedi
    November 2nd, 2013 @ 11:12 am

    http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865589522/Critics-community-and-Enders-Game-An-interview-with-Orson-Scott-Card.html?pg=all

    And as my politics diverged from the political correctness that has captured the left — I mean, (in) 1976 I was a Daniel Patrick Moynihan liberal Democrat — and without changing any of my principles, I’ve now become quite a right-winger in the eyes of the left. And I’m a little baffled by it because I’m a liberal and they’re not. They’re repressive, punishing, intolerant of the slightest variation, absolutely the opposite of what it means to be a liberal. But that’s the way it goes. They still get the label. I am the fact of what it meant to be a liberal. I find the most liberals who feel like I do among people who are labeled as conservatives. It’s a very odd thing.

    But that political thing has affected the criticism of my work. And it would just make me crazy to read asinine, irrelevant comments by critics who think they’re saying something intelligent.

    You see, what happens is, if you respect a writer, then you talk about the work. If you disdain the writer, then you try to psychoanalyze the writer and figure out why would he write this. And that’s all I get from science fiction literary elite. If they mention my work at all, which they rarely do, it’s to dismiss it and to psychoanalyze me, which they are incapable of doing since they’ve never actually formed the kind of community bonds that my fiction always depends on. They have no idea what I’m talking about. They couldn’t produce that fiction if they tried because they don’t share those values. But readers do.

  18. richard mcenroe
    November 2nd, 2013 @ 11:14 am

    Stacy, you’re missing the point here. We should be actively encouraging schmucks like Seth Taylor to avoid any of our activities and entertainments if they don’t approve of our politics. Let’s not waste this golden opportunity.

  19. richard mcenroe
    November 2nd, 2013 @ 11:17 am

    Also, there are frequently better things to do with your money. For example, in Los Angeles, for the price of just ten skipped first-run movies for a couple, you can buy a perfectly serviceable firearm…”Dear Mr. Penn, I’m writing to thank you for my nice Smith & Wesson…”

  20. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    November 2nd, 2013 @ 11:18 am

    Seth Taylor has some unresolved issues to deal with…

    Maybe he should stop being stupid and focus on the book and film’s actual message about empathy, the concept of total war, and zero sum victory?

  21. Rushlimbang
    November 2nd, 2013 @ 11:24 am

    RT @rsmccain: Gasp! ‘Nerdgasm’ Spoiled by Discovery of Homophobia Behind ‘Ender’s Game’? http://t.co/oEvu7qQqVO cc @orsonscottcard #tcot

  22. La Pucelle
    November 2nd, 2013 @ 11:31 am

    The truly hilarious thing is that Card has actually penend gay fiction. That, and if conservatives avoided the torturous prose of some aging hipster, the whiny “MCCARTHYISM!!1!!!” battle cry of ignorant poseurs everywhere would ring throughout the land. A simple action is magically transformed through the lens of the Approved Politics.

    As it’s been noted, such people aren’t truly interested in being just and improving society. They’re trying to make themselves feel superior to others, and their stated cause is just their big stick to do with. Hence, Seth’s Manhattan-sized chip on his shoulder.

    Yes, when you’re a white male of privilege, the fast track up the Victim Hierarchy above racial minorities and women is to come out of the closet. Then you can fast track right to the top!

  23. Cheesecakecrush
    November 2nd, 2013 @ 11:32 am

    The people up in arms about Orson Scott Card being against homosexuality and gay marriage aren’t going to see Ender’s Game, but I bet you $100 they’d go see a Roman Polanski film without skipping a beat.

    He only drugged and raped a 13 year old girl. Hardly gay rights so totally irrelevant right?

  24. Gasp! ‘Nerdgasm’ Spoiled by Discovery of Homophobia Behind ‘Ender’s Game’? | Dead Citizen's Rights Society
    November 2nd, 2013 @ 11:44 am

    […] Gasp! ‘Nerdgasm’ Spoiled by Discovery of Homophobia Behind ‘Ender’s Game’? […]

  25. RS
    November 2nd, 2013 @ 11:49 am

    Dross such as this Taylor fellow are responsible for the artistic blight of the Thirties known as “Socialist Realism” with it’s politically correct depictions of buff, stalwart workers. Alas, the modern equivalent is the “magical homo,” who shows up in most television sitcoms to end chaos and bring the universe back into balance, a la Robert Young in Father Knows Best. At least with mid 20th Century Socialist Realism, the perpetrators mostly wound up hanging limply from barbed wire in Mother Russia someplace. I fear we won’t be so lucky with the new opinion drivers in the world of art and entertainment.

  26. screwtape1a12
    November 2nd, 2013 @ 11:53 am

    RT @rsmccain: Gasp! ‘Nerdgasm’ Spoiled by Discovery of Homophobia Behind ‘Ender’s Game’? http://t.co/oEvu7qQqVO cc @orsonscottcard #tcot

  27. La Pucelle
    November 2nd, 2013 @ 11:54 am

    Thanks for the link, he’s exactly spot on. And I like the fact that he points out that we on the right also have our blind spots — it’s human nature — but the loudest, most obnoxious faction are pretty much overwhelmingly the pseudo-liberal intolerant left.

    I don’t believe it’s politics, per se, but the kind of people who were already prone to mental instability and unearned self-congratulation (possibly untreated Narcissistic and Histrionic Personality Disorders) are simply drawn to the left for its supposed “tolerance”. But these people themselves are rabid and intolerant, and infect their politics with their untreated neuroses. That’s why I’m fond of saying, “If you want to understand politics, study psychology.” All my experience has borne that out.

  28. Joe Dokes
    November 2nd, 2013 @ 12:16 pm

    I do not fear homosexuals but, for now, I want my children to fear them. Then, when they’re older and able to comprehend the existence of such things, their fear can translate to pity and mercifulness at the homosexuals’ blind love of damning sin.

  29. DYSPEPSIA GENERATION » Blog Archive » Gasp! ‘Nerdgasm’ Spoiled by Discovery of Homophobia Behind ‘Ender’s Game’?
    November 2nd, 2013 @ 12:18 pm

    […] The Other McCain is on the case. […]

  30. Joe Dokes
    November 2nd, 2013 @ 12:21 pm

    Don’t forget sodomized, too.

    That’s always a plus on the Left because – whether they actually realize it or not (I suspect most don’t, fully) – imposing sodomy on another is so perfectly emblematic of all they stand for, politically and ethically: they have the power, the means and the will to impose the ultimate physical degradations onto unwilling others, and they truly dig it. Polanski’s was just one expression among many of it.

    That they can now force you to subsidize your own sodomizing via onerous taxes is icing on the sodomy cake.

  31. rumcrook™
    November 2nd, 2013 @ 12:23 pm

    They haven’t confused their political agenda with moral virtue, they have substituted their political leftism for religion and there shall be no religion practiced in public save the religion of leftardism.

  32. RMNixonDeceased
    November 2nd, 2013 @ 12:24 pm

    Gasp! ‘Nerdgasm’ Spoiled by Discovery of Homophobia Behind ‘Ender’s Game’? http://t.co/fFE0a1JFy7 it is about compulsory approval

  33. alpacaherder
    November 2nd, 2013 @ 12:29 pm

    RT @rsmccain: Gasp! ‘Nerdgasm’ Spoiled by Discovery of Homophobia Behind ‘Ender’s Game’? http://t.co/oEvu7qQqVO cc @orsonscottcard #tcot

  34. Jeanette Victoria
    November 2nd, 2013 @ 1:02 pm

    Evil is always repulsed by the truth

  35. Jeanette_Runyon
    November 2nd, 2013 @ 1:02 pm

    RT @rsmccain: Gasp! ‘Nerdgasm’ Spoiled by Discovery of Homophobia Behind ‘Ender’s Game’? http://t.co/oEvu7qQqVO cc @orsonscottcard #tcot

  36. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    November 2nd, 2013 @ 1:45 pm

    So he will hit on her boyfriends when she starts dating?

    I do not put anything past Democrats now-a-days.

  37. McGehee
    November 2nd, 2013 @ 1:52 pm

    They decry the blacklist but happily promulgate their pinklist.

  38. McGehee
    November 2nd, 2013 @ 1:54 pm

    Plus, Baen is one of the few publishers that sells ebooks directly, downloadable in any format. Once you own a copy of one of their ebooks, you own it.

  39. gates of vienna
    November 2nd, 2013 @ 2:38 pm

    Yeah! And if one keeps on skipping those flicks, it pays for the qualifying lessons you need here in VA to have a firearm. And then you can join some kind of gun club and become quite proficient.
    Of course, that’s for those of us whose daddies didn’t teach us to shoot well before first grade. The woman who cuts my hair is a skilled bow hunter; she also built her own tree stand in their woods…
    In the coming meltdown it is our fiat money that’s gonna melt. It won’t be those we know — e.g., the lucky people who call Mr. Penn their friend – it’ll be WHAT we know how to do. A skilled shooter, say, will be in demand for all sorts of reasons. Out here it will be because he can bring home the bacon. It would help if he knows how to cure it, too, and can build a smokehouse in which to do so…

  40. gates of vienna
    November 2nd, 2013 @ 2:51 pm

    That’s one message of the book. Another is to see it as a quest journey of a child. Card is very good at creating memorable child characters, boys and girls, though his boys are particularly well-delineated.
    He also describes so well the tensions and strengths of families. Ender’s older brother, so eaten through with envy, is also drawn with empathy.
    He’s a lightning rod, though. Those various “OrsonScottCard watch” forums are startling.
    As for the gay guy ever developing any focus beyond his gay filter, enh. Not likely. They’re aggressive collectivists for the most part. A subset of the large polyperverse decadence of Urbanity. He can no more “stop being stupid” than he could stop being gay. Or rather, Gay.

  41. Alessandra
    November 2nd, 2013 @ 3:16 pm

    As was remarked on another blog, the only problem for them is that the wrong names were on the list…

  42. Alessandra
    November 2nd, 2013 @ 3:19 pm

    Not to mention all the money and time they spend on their porn gleefully denigrating and debasing
    men, women, children, and sheep – you know, because they aren’t bigoted!

    don’t forget their their Michael Jackson collection! 😉

  43. G Joubert
    November 2nd, 2013 @ 3:20 pm

    “Payback”, ultimately, fuels cultural Marxism in all of its manifestations.

  44. Alessandra
    November 2nd, 2013 @ 3:21 pm

    It’s the terrible hypocrisy of liberals wanting to selectively
    boycott Scott Card, while gleefully giving their money to every
    kind of monster (and monstrous corporation/government) out there
    that led me to ask the question: Who does more violence in society
    and is the most extremist: liberals (including LGBTs) or the
    Westboro folks? Clearly the liberals. Substitute Scott Card for
    Westboro and the answer is exactly the same.

    alessandrareflections.wordpress.com/2013/10/29/who-does-more-violence-in-society-and-is-the-most-extremist-liberals-including-lgbts-or-the-westboro-folks/

  45. Alessandra
    November 2nd, 2013 @ 3:22 pm

    (from another thread- regarding the gaystapo call for boycotting Scott Card) “When you go against the
    liberal agenda with any kind of conviction basically you deserve
    to die (ideally anyway) but at the very least you shouldn’t be
    able to make a living. Tolerance at its finest.”

  46. Alessandra
    November 2nd, 2013 @ 3:24 pm

    “Real bigotry is demonizing those who won’t roll with the perversion of the natural order of things.”

  47. Alessandra
    November 2nd, 2013 @ 3:25 pm

    Here’s to another Chick fil A moment! I’m just waiting for the weekend to be over to smile and post about the millions grossed for the film opening.

  48. Alessandra
    November 2nd, 2013 @ 3:27 pm

    What is the only thing that people who are completely
    without ethics and sexually perverted can complain about? Sane people not normalizing homosexuality.

    Society would be a lot better if everyone were like Scott
    Card.

  49. Joe Dokes
    November 2nd, 2013 @ 3:34 pm

    “Do you see my five fingers, Winston?” asked O’Brien, holding up four while his other hand lay quite visibly upon the pain lever.

    “Please rent us a room at your Christian bed-and-breakfast,” asked the sodomite couple with a team of sodomite lawyers on speedial.

    Exact same thing.

    Sodomites wish you to lose your income for thoughtcrime against their Party. It’s their version of the boot stamping on a human face, forever, and forever has arrived.

  50. Alessandra
    November 2nd, 2013 @ 3:46 pm

    Perfectly stated.

    which is why it is so bad when socons stay home and don’t vote at all levels – and who don’t work or volunteer to change this nasty homosexuality cultural crusade