Who’s stating that?
Given the dedication of the self involved in making art, in what way could any true artist’s perspectives on the world in which they live and the other members of their society – the society for which they are creating their art – not be related to the art that they’re creating? Even Jackson Pollock’s paint flinging is a reflection of his sociopolitical perspective.
Let whoever wants to hire Card hire him. But let them suffer the consequences of throwing their lot in with the worst sort of bigot, is all I see anyone saying. If Bioware loses money because of this affiliation, they will end the affiliation. If it stops another company from hiring Card because they’re seeing that it’s a bad business decision because people will actively choose to avoid products that are associated with the man, so be it.
It’s not as if this doesn’t go both ways. How many people still boycott Jane Fonda, or avoid anything done by Tim Robbins, Susan Sarandon, Sean Penn and other liberals who, unlike Card, have never advocated the imprisonment of Americans on the basis of their personal identities? There will always be people taking a stance, one way or another.
So what is an appropriate response to someone who is funneling money into hate groups, if not to avoid personally enriching him and enabling that funding?
Right here. Bioware has every right to hire him, and other people have every right to tell them they think that’s a bad idea, and to choose freely whether or not to buy the work on that basis.
People use so many factors to decide whether or not to buy something, whether it’s peanut butter or art. Hey, I end up “boycotting” peanut butter brands just because they can’t compete in cost or I hate stirring up the jar or it’s too sweet, which are far more trivial concerns than this. People can’t buy every piece of art they might potentially want, for money reasons as a starting factor. After that, they have other reasons to start filtering out one item or another. I think “the living creator of that piece of art is actively funneling his money into supporting causes that I find morally repugnant” is just fine as a potential reason, but again, not one that every person must include among their criteria.
Josef had a gay lover who treated him horribly, married a woman and then fell in love with a 18 year old boy, Annset and came close to consummating the relationship. Annset, the main protagonist of the novel was the initiator and could also be classed as bisexual insofar as he didn’t seem to regard gender as relevant to love.
When I say he’s not a reflexive fag hater, I don’t mean that he doesn’t hate homosexuals, I mean that his view is at least nuanced, well thought out and internally consistent, even if it doesn’t jibe with yours on a fundamental level. You believe that homosexuality is not a sin and he believes that it is. You and he will never see eye to eye but if you want to truly understand where he’s coming from, you need to at least make the effort to see how the world looks from his eyes.
Insofar as gays side with the homosexual community on issues in which it disagrees with the state such as gay marriage, I would say this is true and relatively uncontentious. It’s not a value judgment but a statement of fact.
Insofar as the LDS church teaches us that we are all immature when we give in to sin. Remember, Mormons regard masturbation as a sin and every straight Mormon has to fight their ingrained urges to masturbate. It’s a sign of maturity to overcome your body’s natural urges. I certainly don’t agree with it but his meaning is clear.
The mormon position is that all men live with temptation & sin and the lord will forgive all that repent but have no sympathy for those who are unrepentant. The sin is irrelevant, they would be hypocrites if they were homosexuals, adulterers or proud coffee drinkers.
As would anybody who, in his view, is promoting a dangerously false belief which is leading even more people into sin.
This is a premise for the entire article. You need to accept this provisionally to even engage with the article.
If you accept that the premise, then the conclusion must naturally follow.
I couldn’t find where you pulled this from but I’m assuming the point he’s making is that homosexuals lie to themselves primarily and lying to others is a natural byproduct.
I can’t find where you pulled this from.
Same premise as above.
It’s interesting, after having participated in the pedophilia thread in the pit that, if you replaced homosexuality with pedophilia in OSC’s essay, he would count as one of the more tolerant people in that pit thread. Pedophilia & homosexuality are emphatically not equivalent morally. But the degree of certainty that each position holds is similar.
If you believed that homosexuality was an evil on par with pedophilia and you were rock certain on that viewpoint, how would you propose to deal with the homosexual problem? From everything I read, OSC’s instinct is to be far more tolerant than the majority of the people who posted in the pit thread and that’s what I mean when I say he’s not a reflexive fag hater.
Let’s say, for example, that a long dead artist we love has a grandchild that believes, and spends money on, causes we don’t believe in. Do we have an obligation to not buy this long dead artists works? Do we always need to know where our money is going?
I ask this out of genuine curiosity - I feel conflicted about supporting OSC. I really disagree with him, but I thought Shadow Complex was the best XBLA game so far, for example.
The thing to think about with that, though, is, and here’s the way I see it. The average cost of a hardcover book, for instance is, let’s say $25 dollars, and the royalty rate is 10%. So, if I buy his book, I’m giving him $2.50 that he could turn around and go to some organization that could hurt gay people. So, for me, it comes down to the question of whether or not the benefits of buying the book (mostly, my pleasure in enjoying the book) outweigh the harm that buying the book brings (in that another $2.50 goes into Americans for Marriage, or maybe he just supersizes his meal at McDonalds.) Now, in my case, it’s not, because I’m not a big fan of his writing, but if I were a big fan of OSC, I could definitely see myself deciding the other way.
Actually, there’s quite a few inconsistencies in his argument. I really don’t want to go back through his article again to get specifics, because I don’t like wading through sewage if I can help it, but one I recall off the top of my head is where he excuses his unreasonable expectations of lifelong celibacy for gays by comparing them to unwed heterosexuals, who are also expected to abstain from sex. The glaring omission, of course, being that unwed heterosexuals can (and are expected to) wed at some point. Homosexuals are expected to remain alone for their entire lives, which for most people is a huge, and wholly unreasonable, burden. One that Card does not expect of straight people.
I do see where he’s coming from. Card’s smart enough to justify his bigotry, but that doesn’t make his position nuanced. Nobody is a bigot “just because.” Every racist, sexist, religious zealot, and homophobe can give you a lengthy list of justifications for why they’re correct to hate on whichever group they target. Quite a few can twist their arguments up so that they can tell themselves that they don’t really hate the other group, they’re just doing what’s “best” for them. Regardless of how much damage their attitudes and actions actually cause.
In that light, I’m going to skip the point-by-point rebuttal of Card’s manifest homophobia. I’m not interested in the excuses - Card’s already provided them, and at more length and detail than you have. It doesn’t disguise the fact that he plainly, manifestly, hates gay people. Whether he started with the hate and built up a structure to excuse it, or started with the structure and reasoned his way into the hatred isn’t really important.
NB:
I was referring to the character from Memory of Earth.
It’s been a few days, but since this thread is still going…
As has been mentioned by tumbleddown, secondary involvement is still (in the case of the BioWare and Chair execs, at least) a matter of choice. Do I feel bad for the people below them - the programmers and artists who just want a steady paycheck and a decent CV at the end of the day? Of course. But I feel bad for them in the same way I feel bad for an artist-cum-janitor who has this great idea for an installation piece but can’t find a sponsor or an exhibit because no town in a hundred mile radius wants his art, and he can’t travel to get it exposed. There are natural limits to the meritocracy we try to make out of our world, and those tend to end up with people being “punished” for decisions they didn’t make, whether it’s where they were born or on what game project they have to work next.
So, yes, there are innocent bystanders, and as much as it can, my heart goes out to them. But in the end, buying a product for which Card was paid to contribute literally involves rewarding a company for choosing to use Card’s services as a writer (or, in the case of Shadow Complex, which is a prequel to Empire, paying royalties to use a work he’s already published). It’s not as though anyone were literally forced into making a game based off a work by Orson Scott Card. And, in reality, it’s not as though not buying the game is “punishing” anybody at all. No one has a right to have their product purchased - as has been mentioned, the reasons for not wanting to purchase something can range anywhere from the political to the absurd, and no one actually needs to defend their decisions with regards to their own money.
Naturally, no one’s actually *requiring *any gamer to think about these sorts of things, nor is anyone suggesting actually banning artists of a certain political affiliation from being allowed to practice their art. The reason it’s coming up is because the gamers who know want to give other gamers the tools with which to make an informed choice. If that means pointing out things that Chair or BioWare would rather not have pointed out, then, well… maybe they underestimated the political hunger of videogame journalists.
Actually, Empire and Shadow Complex aren’t even works by Orson Scott Card. Chair went to him with the idea for Empire with the intention of creating a game based on that idea as well. But somehow, the development process being what it is, Empire came out in 2006 while Shadow Complex wasn’t ready until 2009. Card essentially wrote a tie-in novel both times, no more, no less.
Boycotting these extraneous materials makes sense, but going after the actual games that Card was uninvolved with doesn’t make any sense in my mind.
ETA: I also think the thought process behind something like this involves an executive trying to come up with a big name to create the tie-in materials and Card is likely just the biggest that will say yes. When the Shadow Complex thing first hit, most of the comments on articles relating to it were gamers expressing shock that Card held those opinions. How many executives had no idea as well?