From: bruceg@access4.digex.net (Bruce Garrett)
Newsgroups: soc.motss
Subject: Re: Mormon Query
Date: 30 Nov 1995 22:30:53 -0500

   mishamcm@aol.com (Misha MCM) writes...

M> The info I have comes from the author Orson Scott Card, who is 
M> well-versed in this topic.

	I think the correct phrase here is, "well entrenched."

M> He has no problem discussing the matter with homosexuals, and does not 
M> believe it is wrong for non-Mormons to be practicing homosexuals, but 
M> says that Mormonism considers homosexuality a sin on a par with adultery 
M> and someone who is a practicing homosexual and doesn't consider it wrong 
M> cannot be a Mormon.

	Recommend you try and get ahold of a copy of his anti-Gay bilefest, 
""The Hypocrites of Homosexuality"  as it originally appeared in the 
Sunstone magazine issue February 1990.  If you like screaming forehead 
throbbing anti-Gay hate, that article of Card's is a real treat.  I'd post 
the whole thing, but I hear he's been waving around threats of legal 
action since it started flying around Usenet some time ago.  But I think I 
can get away with a small quote or two, if you'd like a wee a taste of 
it.  Just keep your mouthwash handy...


   "When I was an undergraduate theatre student, I was aware, and
    not happily so, how pervasive was the reach of the underculture of
    homosexuality among my friends and acquaintances.  After a while I 
    stopped being shocked to discover that someone I had known well, or 
    whose talent I admired, was either moving into or already a part of the 
    not-so-clandestine network of gay relationships.  I learned that being
    homosexual does not destroy a person's talent or deny those aspects of
    their character that I had already come to love and admire.  I did 
    learn that for most of them their highest allegiance was to their 
    membership in the community that gave them access to sex."

   "The argument by the hypocrites of homosexuality that homosexual 
    tendencies are gentically ingrained in some individuals is almost 
    laughably irrelevant. We are all genetically predisposed toward some 
    sin or another..."

   "Laws against homosexual behavior should remain on the books, not to be
    indiscriminately enforced against anyone who happens to be caught
    violating them, but to be used when necessary to send a clear message 
    that those who flagrantly violate society's regulation of sexual 
    behavior cannot be permitted to remain as acceptable, equal citizens 
    within that society."

   "...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."


	There is boatloads more of this where it came from.

	This isn't a case of a man simply upholding his own personal 
religious principals.  Clearly this man hates homosexual people.  Deeply.  
When you see words like this, there is no mistaking them for what they mean 
about the person saying them.  Note the insistance that the highest 
principal for a homosexual to uphold is "access to sex." Never mind that we 
might actually love the ones we take into our arms.  The presumption that 
homosexuality is only about sex, not love, is a cornerstone of anti-Gay 
hate propaganda.

	Note the cynical regard of the law as more a weapon against 
homosexual people, then to punish criminal behavior.  Anti Gay statues in 
his reckoning are Specifically there to persecute, not to imprison.  "The 
goal of the polity is not to put homosexuals in jail.  The goal is to 
discourage people from engaging in homosexual practices in the first 
place..."  Thus according to Card, the laws exist to make us outcasts, and 
to keep us from ever being able to form decent and stable households of our 
own.  

	If he really believed that our "highest allegiance" is to a community 
that gives us "access to sex", then the question of our being allowed to 
make a decent place for ourselves in this society wouldn't arise; we just 
would not, because we could not.  By stating flatly that the laws are not 
there so much to punish us, as to keep us from ever becoming "acceptable, 
equal citizens" within society, we see that his fear is the same as any 
other gutter crawling bigot's ever was: that once the persecution ends, 
people might begin to recognize us as their neighbors, rather then see us 
as monsters.

	Whether you can be a Mormon and a practicing homosexual in good 
conscience is not for me to say; I am not a Mormon.  It is equally 
farfetched to believe that it is for the likes of Card to say either; he 
has no conscience.