Ahhh Orson Scott Card. Nothing inspires an awkward debate about "supporting art vs. detesting the artist" more than this gent. Very often, those that adore the Enders Game series tend to find a comfortable Switzerland where they can love the stories (which they typically point out are about denouncing xenophobia and the like) and generally find the things they didn't know about the authors prolific and repugnant harping on "the homosexual". There are a great many anti-gay screeds by Card floating around the internet that can be unearthed with a casual Google search. (This one I especially like). In fact, its particularly hard to parse through the sheer amount of vitriol Card has written on the topic of "the homosexuals" and how many colorful responses there have been. I'd shovel through it to make the case...but its enough to merely google the man. His views are on record, and for the record, so darwinian its staggering. The fact that he's still marketable (what with his video game contracts and comic book publishing deals) speaks to how much work has to be done regarding equality and basic human decency.
Card can publish a "re-imagining" of Hamlet (another great send up of the lunacy here) making the titular character's father a marauding child molesting evil gay (uber-tired) trope and recieve little flack as so many hold up his sci-fi novels as the second coming, but I submit that there should and ought to be a corollary between an artists’ work and his or her political views…especially if said artist can speak to humanitarian interests in his works and be so outspoken against basic equality in his day to day life. Consider me a big believer in ethical consistency and on the tripe that is this Hamlet re-write and his numerous other transgressions on the issue of the day, Card is operating with entirely depleted social (and ethical) currency.
So props to the always amusing "Lets Be Friends Again" for this simple, to the point, and very justified takedown.
