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Comment by simonh | Hacker News Reader

If we ignore everything ever said by people with nasty beliefs, we'd basically never read anything written more than 100 years ago, and a decent chunk of the stuff written since. Anti-slavery campaigners in to 1800s used to beat their children. Pretty much every writer in antiquity was either a slaver or pederasts by modern standards. Where do you stop?

It's worth being aware of so you know to take such things into account, you never know when such views might introduce an unwritten assumption or colour a conclusion, but if it's not relevant to the material then it's a side issue.

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The difference here, is that it's not the 1800s, and OSC continues to not just hold, but evangelize his hateful positions.

See: http://www.nauvoo.com/library/card-hypocrites.html for one of the reasons people find him repellent.

Choice quote (after he had a chance to reflect on the response to his essay):

"...it has become clearer and clearer to me, since writing this essay, that gay activism as a movement is no longer looking for civil rights, which by and large homosexuals already have. Rather they are seeking to enforce acceptance of their sexual liaisons as having equal validity with heterosexual marriages, to the point of having legal rights as spouses, the right to adopt children, and the right to insist that their behavior be taught to children in public schools as a completely acceptable "alternative lifestyle." It does not take a homophobe to recognize how destructive such a program will be in a society already reeling from the terrible consequences of "no-fault" divorce, social tolerance of extramarital promiscuity, and failing to protect our adolescents until they can channel their sexual passions in a socially productive way. Having already lost control of the car, we now find the gay activists screaming at us to speed up as we drive headlong toward the cliff."

This is not a hateful position. It is a political position and a stance of how society should operate. I see no gay hatred there. Simply the strong need for family and society building. Just because you can't understand his reasons and emotionally react to some of his opinions does not a bigot make.

Sure, but it's really, really hard to believe it's all so sterile and impersonal.

"Hey, i'm sure you're a really nice person, I just think you should be legally discriminated against and denied certain rights solely on the basis of your sexual orientation because I have some ill-informed and antiquated ideas about The Sanctity Of Marriage (tm). Beer?"

Doesn't really seem realistic to me.

Oh, let's hear what he has to say:

"Furthermore, if we allow ourselves to be intimidated by our fear of the world's censure into silence in the face of attempts by homosexuals to make their sin acceptable under the laws of the polity, then we have abandoned our role as teachers of righteousness."

"The repentant homosexual must be met with forgiveness. Even hypocritical homosexuals must be treated individually with compassion. But the collective behavior of the hypocrites of homosexuality must be met with our most forceful arguments and our complete intolerance of their lies."

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

Yheaaa, sorry, but he actually is a bigot.

Yes, it is stupid, ignorant and unscientific, but not hateful. It might be used by people with hateful intentions however. "Argument from authority" is logical fallacy but a lot of people are still tricked by it.

We will see how unscientific it is in 50 years more or less...

Let's define what's scientific, which parts of that writing can be considered scientific by that definition and return in 50 years here. Really. I can add that to my TODO list :) Chances that I will be still alive are not very high but I still have those chances.

I want to define what's scientific because after 50 years in pessimistic scenario religion can be considered scientific and pope might be The Chief Scientist.

Replace, "Gay people should not be allowed to marry" with "Black people should not be allowed to marry white people" or "Jews should not be allowed to work as professionals", or "Women should stay at home and take care of the children"

When you start identifying a group, and placing restrictions on rights which you enjoy, you are taking a hateful position.

If he's so concerned about the fabric of society and the family why doesn't he write about the evils of divorce? The divorce rate is like 50%, whereas gayness hovers around 5% depending on who you ask.

Somehow the lack of throbbing, purple-veined meatsicks must render it less compelling.

EDIT: withdrawing the above childishness, turns out he does write extensively about divorce.

He has written about the evils of divorce.

http://www.ornery.org/essays/warwatch/2005-11-13-1.html

A quick search suggests he regularly incorporates criticism of divorce into his other writings.

http://www.ornery.org/essays/warwatch/2007-01-07-1.html

http://www.ornery.org/essays/warwatch/2004-03-28-1.html

Good for him. Sounds like he probably means what he says then.

How is that wrong again?! It is true that they are trying to gain legitimacy. It is no longer about rights but now it is about acceptance. The time has come now to the point where anyone who holds an anti-gay position is criticized and/or boycotted. Now we have not just reached giving gays equal treatment but making changes to accommodate a different lifestyle.

The second point OSC makes is sourced in a discomfort from social disruption. There is a tendency to blame many current state of affairs on the gay movement.

I think in summary we should all reflect on the amount of insight this guy has and the capabilities of prediction he possesses. Just by simply observing things, he makes some deep accurate predictions that are very remote in the future. The article you linked to seems to be written in 1990.

> The time has come now to the point where anyone who holds an anti-gay position is criticized and/or boycotted.

"The time has come now to the point where anyone who holds an anti-black position is criticized and/or boycotted."

"The time has come now to the point where anyone who holds an anti-woman position is criticized and/or boycotted."

"The time has come now to the point where anyone who holds an anti-Jew position is criticized and/or boycotted."

Yes. Yes it has.

The time has come now to the point where anyone who holds a pro-Obamacare position is criticized and/or boycotted.

The time has now come to the point where anyone who holds a pro-privacy position is now criticized and/or boycotted.

The time has now come to the point where anyone who holds an anti-polygamy position is now criticized and/or boycotted.

Yes, lets all give up reasoned discourse and simply attack those who disagree with us.

I disagree with who you are as a person, and on that basis, I think you should be denied rights that are routinely given to the rest of the population. Additionally, I find you personally foul and repulsive, and your very nature disgusts me. But it's nothing personal!

Wait, what? You're upset? You want to fight back? You think that just because you're a human being you should be given the same basic consideration under the law as anyone else? HOW DARE YOU PERSECUTE ME BECAUSE OF MY BELIEFS!

Just so you know, this is what you - and Orson Scott Card - sound like when you try to use this "argument."

you can criticize people for what they think, you cannot criticize people for what they are

Is "don't buy from Nazis" really the same as "don't buy from Jews"? It's not about attacking people who disagree, it's about withdrawing support from those who attack others.

Let's say, someone beats their wife brutally, but they're very good at bowling, and always treat you respectfully. Would you feel good about going bowling with them, regardless of how much objectively correct things about bowling they could teach you? Or would you realize the world is full of people who know as much and more, who don't come with quite such a bad aftertase?

It sounds equivalent to "don't buy scripts or other moviemaking services from Communists."

The distinction you are attempting to draw about attacking others makes little sense given the examples I cited. Opponents of polygamy, supporters of Obamacare and opponents of privacy all favor attacking others (polygamists, people who don't buy health insurance, and people who don't cooperate with spying). Most public policies involve attacking someone - all laws are ultimately enforced at the point of a gun.

There is still a difference between bigoted, chauvinistic superstitions and scapegoating, and disagreements about public policy happening in good faith.

You haven't answered my second question. Have you at least thought about it?

Also, consider this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wagner_controversies#Wagner.27s...

It's just music! Why can't people "just listen to the music" which itself has nothing to do with antisemitism? Oh, but that's different, because it strikes close to home for them, right? Well no, the same goes for any homosexuals or those having empathy for them. Or people who just don't like the idea of the US sinking into chaos (violent revolution) because some truly believe that what homosexuals do in their bedrooms or marriages is to blame for their own abysmal performance in both.

You could argue that you personally don't mind listening to Wagner, but that's not an argument for what others should do - surely you understand that. Likewise, the person that started this subthread didn't say everybody should not listen to OSC, but simply asked if anyone else has the same reaction as them. That's perfectly legit, and making such a fuss about is just silly.

Is the article really that good? It seems like the only good thing anyone has to say about this article, is that what someone else said in alleged attack of it is fallacious...? I found it cringeworthy personally.

Lastly, it's not like someone said OSC made good points with X and Y, and then someone else replied "but he's a homophobe!". The ad-hominem complaints are silly anyway: the post itself is only on here because of who wrote it, not because it's that good, and a negative ad-hominem is kind of a valid response to a positive ad-hominem.

I don't actually have a good answer for your second question. It's a tricky one, which is why I wrote nothing. In the specific circumstance you describe I probably wouldn't bowl with the guy - heck, I've cut people off for far less (e.g., slut shaming in my presence). On the other hand, my cofounder is a big proponent of all sorts of things I oppose (Obamacare, basic income, extreme feminism) and I have no plans to cut her off.

I suspect the reason this jumped out at me is that it's literally an attempt to ostracize a hollywood writer for his other views, and being the good liberal that I am (culturally speaking) this jumps out at me.

So I guess at this point I'm walking away with far less certainty of my views than I started with.

As for the article, you are right that it's not position #1 good. It's a well written version of the same sort of fluff that HN has way too much of, nothing more.

The problem with this logic is that by characterizing preferring one lifestyle to another as an "anti-X position" and therefore something that is by default wrong, we encourage the dismantling of our entire culture.

If we are to say that the only acceptable view is that being gay is as good as being straight, then we must logically do the same for the following

* Being transgender * Being a sex worker * Eating shit for sexual gratification (no chance of AIDS!) * Having sex with animals (without harming them)

I'm not sure that any of the above are very immoral, but I'm not comfortable with teaching that they are ideal, or advisable. I'm also not comfortable with teaching children that becoming a sex worker is as good a career path as any other.

We as a society need to maintain a balance between protecting everyone's rights, and allowing people to have their own personal tastes and opinions. This balance should be based on enforcing the most basic laws that guarantee a person's right to life and safety. Gay people should be free from threats of violence. But so should everyone else, including groups who will never be considered as oppressed by liberals, like nerds in high school. As for tastes and preferences, this isn't something we can decide in a top down way.

"including groups who will never be considered as oppressed by liberals, like nerds in high school."

Isn't that arguably a part of the anti-bullying push?

The entire anti-bullying push is based on a narrative in which bullying results from our society being insufficiently inclusive. If people were more tolerant of differences, we are told, the motivation for bullying would go away.

However this reasoning only applies to certain kinds of bullying, such as bullying of gays (and [1] argues it doesn't even apply in this case). Nerds are bullied because of their actual weakness, not because they are different per se. The sub-culture is a response to bullying, not vice versa.

In order to deal with this kind of bullying, we would need a new narrative in which people have an innate tendency towards picking on other people, and that if not kept in check, this can reach to physical violence and other extremes.

[1] http://owldolatrous.livejournal.com/14079.html

The original essay was written in 1990, his follow up was October, 2013 - he stands by everything he wrote in it, with the only change in his position is that he's no longer seeking to criminalize sexual activity between gay people. That's the progress he's managed to make in 23 years.

Is this different from, say, the black movement? What if there were no longer segregated schools and bathrooms, but african-americans were prohibited to adopt children and black history were not allowed to be taught in schools?

edit: I'm not from the U.S. so I don't know everything as far as minority rights go over there. In my country there are laws agains racism, and they're trying to pass anti-homophobia laws too. I do have a problem with both of these, though, as anybody expressing a racist opinion can be simply jailed without bail. I find the U.S. stance on free speech much more... how do I put it... free?

It's not really any different from the black movement. People who defend institutionalized hatred of gay people don't seem to understand this, and are forever perplexed as to why people affected by it feel so strongly about the issue.

To go a step further, to those who want to continue denying gays rights on the basis of their sexual orientation, they think that allowing gays to marry is just as bad as jailing someone for expressing a racist opinion. They literally do not understand the difference between these two things, hence the virulence of argument.

In the US, it boils down to: you are free to be as much as a bigot as you like in your personal life (there are some special laws about renting and employment) but as long as you are not combining your bigotry with another crime (assault, harassment) you can let your hate flag fly.

I think this helps society blow of some of its racism and bigotry in a safer way than just repressing it, but it's an ongoing struggle between too much freedom and too little, like everything else in America.

https://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/01/17-2

The time has come now to the point where anyone who holds an anti-gay position is criticized and/or boycotted

You say that like it's a bad thing.

It is no longer about rights but now it is about acceptance

(a) There are still lots of rights that many states and organisations do not recognise. (b) There is no difference between rights and acceptance/legitimacy.

There is no difference between rights and acceptance/legitimacy.

In a society that hopes to remain free, there must be a difference between these. There must be space for dialogue, for experimentation, for uncertainty, for personal preference, for disagreement. "Everything which is not prohibited is mandatory" is a totalitarian motto.

For example, although I find Nancy Grace repulsive, illegitimate, unacceptable, unwatchable, and generally awful, at some level I realize she has the right to produce her execrable television programs, and I don't seek to undermine that right.

Perhaps I'm quibbling over a minor point, as I certainly have no quarrel with criticism and boycotts of OSC (or of anyone really), even though I don't choose to take part myself.

That's the Paradox of Tolerance. Should a society trying to be a tolerate society tolerate intolerance? I say intolerance shouldn't be tolerated.

Are you actually saying that we should have "discussion" or a "debate" about whether some people are people?

Your argument is nonsense. People can voice intolerant opinions all they like, but when they make laws that affect a specific group of people on the basis of that intolerance, they've gone a long, far step beyond just voicing an opinion. You want to be intolerant? Great, have at it. But you don't get to back your intolerant beliefs up with intolerant laws. Intolerance in this context isn't about personally disliking a group of people, it's about actively discriminating against them on a widespread basis because of that dislike, and yes, there should be zero tolerance for that sort of thing.

Yeah, that's a very totalitarian point of view. Believe as I do or eat bullets subhuman scum.

"a different lifestyle" - homosexuality is not more a lifestyle than heterosexuality. When did you decide to become heterosexual?

Also, as somebody already pointed out, change in Orson's comment homosexual with 'black' or 'Jewish' and see how it reads.

It's wrong because it assumes it's bad to accept gay people.

It's just a fact that even people with repugnant beliefs about certain classes of people can still make complete sense in other domains.

Nobody disputes that. The question is, I believe, if we should enable them and elevate them. Giving Card a platform and indulging him validates his entire personal concept, not just the good parts. It's not only a matter of giving credit, it's about choosing where your content comes from.

This person is still alive and relevant and subject to social acceptance. And even with dead people, we are reluctant to cite them if they have a bad reputation - it's only that we make certain historical allowances based on the perceived historical distance to us.

Especially in this day and age, it's easy to find alternative authors on pretty much any subject who convey the same ideas without the amoral baggage. Let's recognize them instead.

Do you think this essay contains unique insights? No way. It's here because it's written by Orson Scott Card.

You know if we practiced the same methodology a long time back, many prominent people may never have gained credence even if they came up with some amazing stuff simply because they were gay. Case in point: Alan Turing.

You could argue that "we" always practiced the methodology of penalizing people with beliefs that were perceived as abnormal. Case in point: Alan Turing.

However, this is not the level I want this considered at. Instead, I invite you to look at what you're comparing here. There is OSC's philosophy of hatred on one side, and Alan Turing's sexuality on the other (which was never about harming anyone and hence could always be considered ethically neutral). You can't meaningfully argue that the two are similar. Yes, they share the trait of being socially unaccepted at the time, but that's also where the similarities end.

I'm not proposing we shun people because their beliefs are unpopular. I'm talking about making a choice not to elevate people who are unethical.

You are trying to retrofit current sense of morality onto the sense held by people in the past. What if people during Turing's time actually thought that homosexual behavior was unethical (which I think is not too far from the truth)?

> What if people during Turing's time actually thought that homosexual behavior was unethical (which I think is not too far from the truth)?

First of all, I assert being gay is not unethical. And it never was. Sure, it was considered amoral, but that's not the same. Could you elaborate on why you think an ethical argument could be constructed in favor of being militantly anti-gay?

It seems like you're purposely misinterpreting his point. He's not saying what should be, he's saying what probably was. You might have been saying that homosexuality is unethical a hundred years ago with the same certainty with which you denounce Card. I'm sure nobody here actually thinks that being gay is unethical.

While we're accusing people of purposeful misinterpretation, let me pass that right back at you. I wanted to hear the rationale for calling being gay unethical. I wasn't about to allege anything. But if someone asserts that there might be an ethics argument against homosexuality, I'd really like to hear it.

Okay, I apologize about implying that you're being intentionally obtuse. About the ethics argument, you (or maybe someone else above) said that anti-homosexuality is a violent hateful position, and the homosexuality is just a sexual preference. I'm not disagreeing with you, but an opponent might claim that your arguments regarding both are extremely ad-hoc. You could just as easily claim that homosexuality is unnatural or that it's against god's will or that it goes against our national interests or any other bullshit. Why I didn't want to make these arguments is because I'm not interesting in debating this side. I don't think homosexuality is unethical, and hence carrying on this debate isn't pleasant to me. I'm just saying that thinking that both positions had the same ethical value in any time is presentism.

I've found presentism to be an all but impossible concept for those whose ideology drives their historiography.

So you guys are calling me either stupid or malevolent, thanks for that. Aaron, there really isn't a lot of ideology in my posts - but how about yours? I've tried, patiently, explaining why I think homosexuality is not unethical in any historical context, and why I believe militant homophobia is. One is behavior which is deemed unacceptable but doesn't negatively affect anyone, and the other one is about harming and denigrating people who are not like you. There is no contest. If you really believe this is "presentism", there is not a lot left to talk about.

I mean, I don't know the arguments, but I imagine that some sort of argument comparing homosexuality to pedophilia could be made. Just to make it clear, this is not what I believe.

It's not about ethics, it's about beliefs vs qualities. Being gay is a genetic trait, it's not a formed belief system. Whether that was generally understood 70 years ago is neither here nor there. Furthermore, there is the question of liberty. Being gay and performing homosexual acts is a personal choice, it does not hurt anyone else the way bigotry does.

> Whether that was generally understood 70 years ago is neither here nor there.

That's some handwaving.

Again, your argument looks at it with present eyes.

So does yours. It's impossible for us to have any non-modern perspective. It's a moot point to argue. My point is that there is a difference between a belief and biological trait. That distinction is timeless regardless of what contemporary morality says about various beliefs and actions.

> So does yours.

How so?

> It's impossible for us to have any non-modern perspective.

Sure, but we can try.

> My point is that there is a difference between a belief and biological trait.

I mean, I get your point and I agree with it but again, that does not really tell us anything about ethics in the past.

>> If we ignore everything ever said by people with nasty beliefs, we'd basically never read anything written more than 100 years ago

Which of the two do you believe?

1) There is an objective Correct Set Of Beliefs, and we're closer to it now then ever before, hence you can judge people in the past. 2) There are no objectively correct beliefs, hence people in the past would be just as correct to say that you have nasty beliefs.

If #1, where do you get your objective set?

If #2, why do you make your statement?

I hope you don't take the inconsistent position many people do: say there's nothing objective when others judge you, but act as though there is when you judge others.

(Personally I believe there are objective truths, and each generation gets some things right and other things wrong. But that's a Christian view.)

That's why you should look at their beliefs in the time they said them.

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