Here is a petition organised by AllOut calling on DC Comics to drop Orson Scott Card. Scott Card is, in my opinion, an excellent writer of science fiction. Ender’s Game is a gripping novel, as is its sequel, Speaker for the Dead. Ironically, what stood out for me most about both books was their sympathetic and imaginative engagement with life forms (literally) worlds away from humans. However Scott Card does not extend this sympathy to homosexuals. Here is an extract from an essay he wrote in 1990:
This applies also to the polity, the citizens at large. Laws against homosexual behavior should remain on the books, not to be indiscriminately enforced against anyone who happens to be caught violating them, but to be used when necessary to send a clear message that those whoflagrantly violate society’s regulation of sexual behavior cannot be permitted to remain as acceptable, equal citizens within that society.
The goal of the polity is not to put homosexuals in jail. The goal is to discourage people from engaging in homosexual practices in the first place, and, when they nevertheless proceed in their homosexual behavior, to encourage them to do so discreetly, so as not to shake the confidence of the community in the polity’s ability to provide rules for safe, stable, dependable marriage and family relationships.
However he seems to have rather softened his views since – and I don’t think he should be barred from writing Superman stories for DC Comics.
