yonmei

08:33 pm: Oh no. I refuse to believe it. The universe is not so badly designed.
Orson Scott Card was given the Margaret A. Edwards Award for his "outstanding lifetime contribution to writing for teens". The two books named are Ender's Game and Ender's Shadow, the novel and the paraquel about the infant Hitler who committed genocide of an entire species and then fled with his sister through thousands of years to a Brazil-type planet where he redeemed himself. (See: Heterosexism all right for teens! on feministsf blog and Farah at The Inter-Galactic Playground.)

Orson Scott Card is a bigot. He doesn't like Muslims. He doesn't like "homosexuals". He supports Romney for President, and Romney's connections to terror camps for teenagers are strong and direct. (Read about the lawsuit. Seriously: Orson Scott Card wants the next President to be a man whose two main fundraisers both made their millions running prison camps to which parents could send their adolescents who were being too gay or too uppity or too independent, to have them broken so they'd know not to be like that any more.)

But most of all... Orson Scott Card is a bigot. His bigotry isn't something away in the past, something he said or did when he was a teenager or a very young nan: he's written bigoted columns about LGBT people (and about Muslims, now) in the past twenty years.

The Margaret A. Edwards Award is sponsored by School Library Journal and administered by the Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA), a division of the ALA. Card will be honored at the YALSA Edwards Awards Luncheon and presented with a citation and cash prize of $2,000 during the 2008 ALA Annual Conference to be held in Anaheim, California, June 26-July 2. Believe me, if I could get there, I'd be picketing. If you can get there, picket for me. Giving Orson Scott Card a "lifetime achievement award" says something. It says that the people who decided he should get the award either did not know he is a homophobic bigot - which says they haven't informed themselves of much about him - or knew and didn't consider it important. Nor did they consider it important that he doesn't like Muslims.

Members of the 2008 Edwards Committee are:
Committee Chair Brenna Shanks, King County Library System, 960 Newport Way NW, Issaquah, WA 98027, USA;
Patty J. Campbell, Horn Book Magazine, 56 Roland Street, Suite 200, Boston MA 02129, USA (pcampbell@hbook.com);
Ruth Ellen Cox Clark, AA Library Education Tech & Distance Instructor, Joyner Library 1806, East Carolina University, East Fifth St, Greenville, NC 27858-4353, US (clarkr@ecu.edu);
Erin Downey Howerton, Johnson County Library, 9875 West 87th Street, Overland Park, Kansas, KS 66212, US;
Kimberly L. Paone, Elizabeth Public Library, 11 South Broad Street, Elizabeth, New Jersey, NJ 07202, USA.
(Where there are links, they go to "contact us" comment pages.)

Also, the American Library Association, 50 E. Huron Street, Chicago, IL 60611. YALSA's e-mail address is yalsa@ala.org.

What I have in mind to do is send them all copies of Dissecting Orson Scott Card. I'll format it all into one document and PDF it: if you'd like a copy too, comment here. If you don't feel someone who's written that "The argument by the hypocrites of homosexuality that homosexual tendencies are genetically ingrained in some individuals is almost laughably irrelevant. We are all genetically predisposed toward some sin or another; we are all expected to control those genetic predispositions when it is possible" is someone who should be given a lifetime achievement award for writing for teenagers, write to them, too.

---Update:


I found this on the School Library Journal website, and tried to post a response, but all the reaction I got from them was "We're sorry, but we do not allow comments that contain HTML code, expletives, and certain terms common in spam. Please try editing your comment." I tried to edit it several times, guessing what specific words were objected to, but I suspect that in order to get it posted, I'd have to eliminate most of the meat. So I gave up. You try.

So if Orson Scott Card had written, "The argument by the hypocrite Negroes that Negro tendencies are genetically ingrained in some individuals is almost laughably irrelevant. We are all genetically predisposed toward some sin or another; we are all expected to control those genetic predispositions when it is possible" - and until 1978, Mormons *were* required to believe that black people were more sinful than white people - this would have been considered irrelevant in his fitness to receive a lifetime achievement award for writing for teenagers?

I had been an Orson Scott Card fan since I was 17, and at first, when I read his poisonous bigotry, I too thought "This is just his personal politics: I can ignore what he thinks of me, and enjoy his writing for what it is".

Unfortunately, as time went on, and Orson Scott Card became more open and more detailed about what he thinks of people like me, I began to realise that his bigotry against LGB people in fact informs his writing: and I stopped being able to enjoy his writing. Orson Scott Card thinks teenagers who know their sexual orientation isn't heterosexual should be made to feel that they are disgusting, evil, and wrong. A man like that ought not to receive an honour for writing for teenagers: he ought to be condemned.

If he were writing, in similar style, about black people, about Jews, about disabled people - arguing, for example, that legal marriage ought to be denied "people like that", that this is intrinsically sinful - would the ALA argue that his published politics and religion ought not to be considered relevant? That all that matters is that his fiction?

I don't think so. So we have to ask: Why is it acceptable to vilify LGBT people? What message does this send to LGBT teenagers?

---Second update

I wondered what inspired just then that specific screed on gay marriage. Of course, the obvious external trigger was the mayor who granted marriage licenses to same-sex couples: a lot of bigots got vilely angry about that.

But it was quite long and quite detailed for a rant that had apparently been inspired by an event that occurred only a few days before he must have written it.

Janis Ian married Patricia Snyder on 27th August 2003, in Canada. She said (cite) "We got married because we could. As a couple, we wanted the same rights and the same social recognition as our heterosexual friends have. We also got married because, just like coming out, public figures need to do that to make the rest of the world aware."

Janis Ian and Orson Scott Card are long-term friends, as a comment on this blog reminded me: they're mutual fans of each other's work (Card contributed a story to Stars, the odd and lovely Janis Ian anthology). According to this commentator, Orson Scott Card actually attended Ian and Snyder's wedding.

Here's what he wrote about it, and them, not even six months afterwards:

But homosexual "marriage" is an act of intolerance. It is an attempt to eliminate any special preference for marriage in society -- to erase the protected status of marriage in the constant balancing act between civilization and individual reproduction.

So if my friends insist on calling what they do "marriage," they are not turning their relationship into what my wife and I have created, because no court has the power to change what their relationship actually is.

Instead they are attempting to strike a death blow against the well-earned protected status of our, and every other, real marriage.

They steal from me what I treasure most, and gain for themselves nothing at all. They won't be married. They'll just be playing dress-up in their parents' clothes. (link)

God, what a piece of shit he is.

---Third update

There's a statement up about the Edwards award at the YALSA site, and the YALSA Communications Officer left a comment at FeministSF blog: The award, in fact, is being given for two specific books: Ender’s Game and Ender’s Shadow.

The statement, in fact, says that the award "honors an author, as well as a specific body of his or her work, for significant and lasting contribution to young adult literature".

Orson Scott Card argues that it's right to make gay sex illegal because that way young adults who are coming out as LGBT won't have adult role models, won't know they can be happily and confidently queer, and won't expect to be able to form stable adult relationships with their partners. This is what YALSA chooses to honour?

Also from the statement: "It also recognizes an author's work in helping adolescents become aware of themselves and addressing questions about their role and importance in relationships, society, and in the world.”

I have been re-reading Ender's Shadow and Ender's Game and have something specific to write about those works, but honestly, Stephanie: there is no misconception here. YALSA is choosing to honour a homophobic bigot who argues for active legal discrimination and harassment of LGBT people in order to prevent LGBT young adults from becoming aware of themselves or honestly addressing questions about their role and importance in relationships, society, and in the world. When YALA honours Orson Scott Card, even if YALSA is directing our attention to the novels about children/teenagers committing murder and genocide - and living a sexless, genderless life in an orbital prison - YALSA is honouring a man who has freely expressed the view that LGBT teenagers ought not to feel confident and happy about their sexual orientation.

I wrote in response to the communications officer:

Dear Stephanie,

Thanks for your comment and the link provided to YALSA's response. I'll add that link to my own journal post about this issue, and I've attached my comment responding to yours at FeministSF blog below.

I think YALSA misunderstands the problem.

Orson Scott Card is an outspoken homophobic bigot who argues that not only is legal equality for LGBT people unacceptable, even legalising same-sex sexual activity is unacceptable: and further, he has defended his beliefs on the principle that he takes the "middle way" - he hates the "sin" - LGBT people falling in love, making love, getting married - but "loves the sinner". He argues that LGBT people mostly become the way we are because we've been abused in childhood - a common argument from the "ex-gay" movement, and one that has caused more pain that I think you can quite imagine to many, many parents of LGBT people.

YALSA is free, of course, to bestow the Edwards award on anyone they please. I acknowledge the strength and power in the two books for which YALSA is giving Orson Scott Card the award. But the award is being presented, not to the two books, but to Orson Scott Card himself, who is being honored for his "work in helping adolescents become aware of themselves and addressing questions about their role and importance in relationships, society, and in the world".

You cannot deal with this problem by saying "Pay no attention to the bigot behind the curtain". To establish that YALSA is not honoring Orson Scott Card for his work against LGBT adolescents, their families and friends, you need to say so - to explicitly say that YALSA opposes bigotry against LGBT people, and believes in equality for all. You will find, I suspect, that Orson Scott Card will strongly object to your doing so: he will want it established that his belief that LGBT people ought to be criminalized and harassed and discriminated against is not homophobic at all, but just a "middle way", of "loving the sinner, hating the sin". (His words, in a published interview.)

Yonmei

Tags: angry queer, dissecting orson scott card