One of the most important books i read as a kid was Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card. In case you haven't read it, Ender's Game is the story of a bright and sensitive young boy plucked from a life of torment and bullying at the hands of his classmates and his sadistic older brother to be trained as genocidal military commander. Despite his torturous youth and his brutal military education Ender grows up to be a man of peace and tolerance (after killing almost an entire race of aliens, but i digress).
For a bright and sensitive young fag who had enormous difficulty interacting with my peers this novel was a life-line to me. I was eleven, on the precipice of puberty and already the caste systems that genesis in middle school and crystallize in high school were becoming clear to me. What was also clear was the fact that intelligence and compassion would not not earn me a place on the upper tiers. I was lonely and alienated and then i discovered this amazing book and i realized i wasn't alone, there was a man out there who had grown up feeling as awkward and alienated as me and he had written this amazing book to let kids like me realize we could be accepted and understood. We could even be heroes.
Which i suppose is why Card's vitriolic attack in the Mormon Times, against not just same sex marriage but homosexuals as a whole, cuts me so fucking deeply. I don't think their is any worse feeling then to think you are understood and accepted only to realize not only are you rejected but you are actually reviled.
Afterelton.com does a great job of refuting Card's essay (which claims same-sex marriage will be the 'end of Democracy in America', equates same-sex marriage with violation of private property, and advocates the violent overthrow of any government that recognizes gay unions) with far more insight and mental dexterity then i think i could muster at the moment. This has been a rough day, and learning that one of my inspirations thinks of me and my people as less then human has been the bile icing on a slice of shit cake.
1 comment:
I'm aggrieved by this article. I also love Ender's Game, and in fact, when my little brother broke his arm at the beginning of this summer, I read the book out loud to my digital voice recorder and burned it to CD for him to listen to.
It's not just gay people he's persecuting in his article. He says that women want to have children out of wedlock, but still expect men to pay child support?! The nerve of those hussies! Card needs to take a course in logic--his arguments do not follow a single, defensible thread. They are scattered and make leaps that have no foundation or basis.
My condolences on the loss of a childhood friend, but like Old Yeller, rabid dogs have to be put down.
Post a Comment