Ender's Game was my favorite book when I was 12, so I read a whole hell of a lot of Card's books before I knew anything about his personal beliefs. I tried so hard to think they were awesome, but everything after Ender's Game is pretty uninspired.
After a certain number of words, everything Orson Scott Card writes is at risk of devolving into the exact same plot:
1. Character glimpses a new way of life.
2. Character is misunderstood and persecuted by society.
3. Character collects followers and heads off into the middle of the wilderness to found a new society.
This is an effective summary of not only the Ender's Game series but his Homecoming saga, Alvin Maker series, Lovelock, Wyrms, Treason, and probably a few others.
The Homecoming saga is literally the Book of Mormon... IN SPAAAAAACE! It sort of holds up until the last book, then he completely loses it--I was able to sort of read the early books simply as S.F. but eventually it got too Mormon for me to handle.
To be perfectly honest, that's a great way of describing how he feels about homosexuals (or anyone that breaks his heteronormative ideals).
More importantly, though, making an incredibly inane distinction over how much he hates a group of people misdirects readers from the fact that OSC has some incredibly harmful views on society that should not be tolerated.
Ugh. Whatever happened to "I don't agree with what you have to say, but I will fight for your right to say it?" that has made America great? Is it so quickly forgotten?
If he's a jerk and he's wrong and you think he's overrated or should be boycotted, you know, go ahead and say so, but "should not be tolerated"? That's the language of "they belong in jail or Siberian labor camps".
> To be perfectly honest, that's a great way of describing how he feels about homosexuals ...
That he is fearful? That he feels the same emotion that one might experience from a giant hairy spider, or cancer, or a bottle of nitroglycerin? Not liking something, or not wanting it to be public policy, does not make someone fearful.
> the fact that OSC has some incredibly harmful views on society that should not be tolerated.
It's a fact that a lot of the homosexual leadership leads lives of debauchery and wanton disregard for consequences. It is not harmful to suggest that perhaps they should not be given free reign to rewrite family and marriage law, nor indoctrinate schoolchildren.
Now this is being discussed in the context of a religious leader (Card) rallying the troops (Mormons). The Mormons are a religion with a fanatical devotion to procreation, children, and families. When a bunch of slick Hollywood queers try to move marriage in the direction of being a frivolous indulgence, the internal Mormon rhetoric is naturally going to run towards the revolutionary. (And it is not idle talk. In a fantasy world where the lunatic wing of the queer movement gets their wishes on marriage laws, Utah probably would secede from the U.S.)
The level of homophobia that he has shown and some of the things in some of his book, might be construed as a mental disease. The effort that many homophobic people go to to "hate" (or whatever you want to call it) homosexual people tends to seem "diseased" to me.
OSC: "I will act to destroy that government [that recognizes gay marriages] and bring it down"
Ender's Game is a story that a lot of people from different walks of life can connect with.
OSC is a homophobic asshole.