So I decided to take a stroll through the archives at Mormon Times (When I looked their banner read: "Have peace with one another – Mark 9:50".  Presumably this only applies to Mormons…).  On July 3, Card had a column in which he wrote:

I happened to be visiting a singles ward in California when the First Presidency’s letter concerning LDS support of the pro-marriage amendment to the California constitution was read out.

The bishop added comments from the stake president dealing with the rules for talking to the press (not inside the church building). Then he added his own comments, reminding the Saints (but not in these words) that this is not a declaration of war against individuals, but a defense of a vital institution. We should not forget our compassion amid this struggle.

I add my words to his: We are not angry with those whose lives have been shaped by desires that most of us don’t feel. 

So this would be conciliatory, Love The Sinner Orson.  Intrigued…I read onward through the column, eventually coming to this…

I say this knowing that several of my friends have already entered into "gay marriages" and have done so in the firm belief that it will lead them to greater happiness, that they harm no one by doing it and that it is wrong for society to withhold from them what is so freely given to others.

These are good-hearted people. They cannot help having desires that most other people do not have, or lacking desires that might lead to happiness within traditional marriage. They look at our traditional marriage laws and see, as Ellen DeGeneres puts it, "we’re being told to sit in the back of the bus."

I don’t want to make any statement that would condemn these friends of mine or even hurt their feelings. I believe that they are mistaken in their belief that their "marriage" harms no one.

Friends let it be said, whose highest allegiance is to their membership in the community that gives them access to sex.  Then, twenty-one days later, presumably still not wanting to condemn or hurt the feelings of "some of my best friends are", his column contains this:

That a few individuals suffer from tragic genetic mixups does not affect the differences between genetically distinct males and females.

That many individuals suffer from sex-role dysfunctions does not change the fact that only heterosexual mating can result in families where a father and a mother collaborate in rearing children that share a genetic contribution from both parents.

I’m sure that didn’t hurt a bit.  And as many people now know, there was also this…

Because when government is the enemy of marriage, then the people who are actually creating successful marriages have no choice but to change governments, by whatever means is made possible or necessary.

and this…

How long before married people answer the dictators thus: Regardless of law, marriage has only one definition, and any government that attempts to change it is my mortal enemy. I will act to destroy that government and bring it down, so it can be replaced with a government that will respect and support marriage, and help me raise my children in a society where they will expect to marry in their turn.

That Card is playing with fire here is not mitigated in the least by his gloss that the war is not to be waged against individuals, by which he presumably means gay people.  What does he seriously expect to happen if it ever came to the second American civil war he earnestly desires, and the rallying cry is Save Humanity From The Homosexuals?  He knows damn well what will happen. 

James Carrol, author of Constantine’s Sword, wrote in The Bostan Globe, about the fire that Card is playing with.  He speaks of Bush and the republican’s effort to demonize gay people for political gain, but replace Bush with Card and it still applies…

…When quasi-hysterical fearmongering replaces reasonable debate, dark forces can be set in motion that outrun anyone’s intentions, and that is especially true when the question involves a segment of society that has long been subject to irrational bigotry. To define the wish of homosexuals for equal access to marriage rites and rights as a mortal threat to the social order, as Bush does, is to put gay people themselves in an unprecedented position of jeopardy. Bush and a conservative punditry, out of crude self-interest, are working hard to reverse the evolution of attitudes that has blurred the boundary between blue America and red. Bush wants that boundary bright. In an election year, it may work. But it is dangerous.

The phrase "culture war" comes from "Kulturkampf." That word was coined in the 1870s when Germany’s George W. Bush, Otto von Bismarck, launched a "values" campaign as a way of shoring up his political power. Distracting from issues of war and economic stress, the "Kulturkampf" ran from 1871 to about 1887. Bismarck’s strategy was to unite his base by inciting hatred of those who were not part of it.

His first target was the sizable Catholic minority in the new, mostly Protestant German state, but soon enough, especially after an economic depression in 1873, Jews were defined as the main threat to social order. This was a surprising turn because Jewish emancipation had been a feature of German culture as recently as the 1860s. By 1879, the anti-Jewish campaign was in full swing: It was in that year that the word "anti-Semitism" was coined, defining not a prejudice but a public virtue. The Kulturkampf was explicitly understood as a struggle against decadence, of which the liberal emancipated Jew became a symbol. What that culture war’s self-anointed defenders of a moral order could not anticipate was what would happen when the new "virtue" of anti-Semitism was reinforced by the then burgeoning pseudo-science of the eugenics movement. Bismarck’s defense of expressly German values was a precondition of Hitler’s anti-Jewish genocide.

One need not predict equivalence between the eventual outcome of Bismarck’s culture war and the threat of what Bush’s could lead to. For our purposes, the thing to emphasize is that a leader’s exploitation of subterranean fears and prejudices for the sake of political advantage is a dangerous ploy, even if done in the name of virtue. No, make that especially if done in the name of virtue.

Card may even shed a tear or two for his gay friends if they should meet the fate of the gay character in one of his Homecoming books who had his testicles cut off by a mob and rammed down his throat. 

Or not.  While digging around for Card references, I stumbled upon this blog post titled, Orson Scott Card Has Always Been an Asshat, which led me to dig for, and finally find this one titled, Ender and Hitler: Sympathy For The Superman.  Go read them both for some insight into how deep the facist strain runs in science-fiction and fantasy circles (assuming you haven’t already read Norman Spinrad’s The Iron Dream…).  I’m not entirely convinced that Card was deliberately patterning Ender’s life after Hitler’s…you could probably find likenesses to Ender’s life in any number of historical figures just by random chance…but that some inner sympathy for Hitler’s situation, if not the man himself, animates Card deep down inside is unmistakable to me.  Card’s protestations that some of his best friends are notwithstanding, we are as much a threat to the survival of humanity in his eyes, as the Jews were to a whole lot of people in the days just before they were being crammed into showers and dosed with insecticide.  When he waves the gay menace scarecrow at his readers he knows exactly what he’s doing and why.  And like every other hatemonger who ever walked this earth, he doesn’t want to be held responsible for the consequences because he didn’t Intend them.  He says.  He may even believe it.  Ender isn’t Hitler but Card himself, who causes the buggers to be wiped out of existence, but is himself innocent of genocide.

Because his motives were pure.  He didn’t hate the sinner…he loved them.   We should not forget our compassion amid this struggle…

In the moment when I truly understand my enemy, understand him well enough to defeat him,
then in that very moment I also love him. I think it’s impossible to really understand somebody,
what they want, what they believe, and not love them the way they love themselves.
And then, in that very moment when I love them…. I destroy them.
I make it impossible for them to ever hurt me again. I grind them and grind them until they don’t exist.

–Ender

Loving the sinner.