Orson Scott Card Hiring Sends Mixed Signals to DC Comics' LGBT Fans

[chastmastr]

But the point I keep making is that it's not your place to decide the validity of his position.

Not true. It is every rational person's "place" to decide the validity of things and what they believe about them. Whether that is encoded in civil laws or not is another matter.

It is "the people's." In a democratic society, it is extremely unwise to force social changes, regardless of nature, without clear majority support. However, a great majority also requires that the dissention faction be treated as a protected minority.

It may be unsuccessful or difficult, but right and wrong are not dependent on majority support, and thankfully, neither are our rights in the US under the Constitution--which is another reason I am glad that the United States is not a pure democracy but a democratic republic which, regardless of waves of public opinion, guarantees rights under the law (at least in theory) for everyone and are very hard to eliminate.

[Two Headed Sex Beast]

Orson Scott Card Hiring Sends Mixed Signals to DC Comics' LMFAO fans too.

[C-Dot]

Several times you implied and directly claimed that gay people did not go trough comparable mistreatment.

Let me quote me....again.....for the umpteenth time......

"In all of those differences stated, it doesn't take away anything that happened with gay people or is a "competition". I didn't say gay people didn't suffer or gay people didn't go through things in ANY single thing. I said what they didn't go through when "comparing black to gay", not "they didn't go through anything period". There's a.....wait for it....big difference. I did show differences and the purpose of stating is to say that they are more than just lumped into one thing that are interchangeable or full comparison. So when someone likens Jim Crow to a same sex marriage license, they should know how deep it is before saying something like that. Anyone should know how deep something is before comparing it with something else."

I clearly said that some things are bad comparisons to make (if you actually read it). Slavery being compared to this is not a good comparison because there wasn't a comparable situation (being bought/sold as property, skin color, etc.) to make that link. Jim Crow compared to same sex marriage, the thing that sparked this response, is a bad comparison to make when you actually look at both. Other examples named are not good comparisons because there isn't a comparable situation or when you look at how deep it is. And that is the point you fail to get (again, if you actually read it). Some things just are what they are. For someone to liken certain things with no parallel whatsoever to make a link or to not actually look at whats being compared is reason for someone to go "what?". And I did go "what?". Understandably so.

The thing is, at the moment gay people are way more mistreated than black people.

See THIS is "starting a competition". And a wrong one at that. (Funny....several instances and not a single "Olympics!" comment.)

There are no countries in the world today which kill black people just for being black (I don't know if there ever was). There are, however, countries today which execute gay people just for being gay (such as Iran).

You throw in something like that as your "more mistreated" and fail to bring up the cold hard fact that for years in this country and other countries, several others were killed with no justice by the government or its laws. Yeah let's just pretend that black people and others were never killed with zero recourse or exemption from the laws governing a country whatsoever in recent times. And speaking of which, you do know what a "sodomy law" is, right? It is law based on act, not being. Doesn't take away how wrong it is.

Along with Jews and Gypsies, gay people were marked for destruction by the Nazi Holocaust.

*sigh* First.....

"Actually, that's all well and good.....if I actually said that gay people didn't go through anything."

"Now maybe you didn't notice here, but I didn't say anything about concentration camps. Why? Because I know that gay people were killed in the Holocaust along with Jewish people, black people, and so on (people bring up gay Nazis but that is problematic when you had just a prominent one who was killed by Hitler and the aforementioned).".

It's simple as hell to actually read what someone is saying. Second, gay people were killed during the Holocaust in concentration camps, but they were not killed as targets of the Holocaust. They were not "targeted for destruction".

"Nazi Germany did not seek to kill all homosexuals. Nevertheless, the Nazi state, through active persecution, attempted to terrorize German homosexuals into sexual and social conformity, leaving thousands dead and shattering the lives of many more."

From the National Holocaust Museum. Quoted almost everywhere.

They were the group with highest mortality rate in the concentration camps, due to being mistreated both by the Nazis and the inmates.

One of the problems in this thread is that people just put up things and don't fact check. The numbers of gay prisoners in Nazi concentration camps ranged from five thousand to as high as fifteen thousand with overall arrest numbers at fifty thousand. Women were not persecuted like the men were. Looking at that number versus Jewish non-homosexual people in camp and arrested, you're dead wrong. The highest mortality rate was the Jewish non-homosexual group by a country mile followed by the Roma and Sinti people. They were the ones killed at the concentration camps and the death camps like Auschwitz/Westerbork/Bergen-Belsen and so on while gay men labored via "extermination through work". They were the main targets of the Holocaust with the numbers far surpassing homosexual prisoners (Just like the Chinese being the targets of the Nanking massacre with hundreds of thousands killed. Just like the African slave trade with over millions of slaves killed.). Gay people were killed by labor, abuse, murder, and so on (and weren't considered victims of Nazi persecution yet targeted by the Nazi regime for "reconditioning"). But they were not the highest by a long shot.

When the war was over, the Allies liberated the camps and let everyone go home, except gay people, who were transferred to regular jails to finish their sentences.

Some gay people were released and some remained in custody. Not all gay people.

Laws which criminalized homosexuality stayed on the books in most of the Western world sometimes up until the 1990s. It was never illegal to be black in a modern democracy.

Laws that criminalized homosexual acts followed by "never illegal to be black in a modern democracy"? Do you even see how flawed of an argument that is? What is "be black"? If your definition is "just existing with black skin" then "being gay" is "existing as a homosexual" yes? If that's the case, look at those laws again. Look at the definition of "sodomy law". It was not illegal to be gay. It was the acts that were criminalized. The activities. You're comparing laws based on actions with "illegal for being". As someone stated before, skin color is a blatant thing that is immediately noticeable to people from birth. Someone can look at a person's skin and have whatever thought based on what they see right then and there. Now someone can look at a person and think "they're gay" based on whatever thoughts they have or whatever stereotypes and so on, but you don't know what they are into until they tell you or....you see action. And that is the difference. Action is what those sodomy laws were about. And uhm "in a modern democracy", there have been several instances of people being criminalized in this country and others current or in the past because of skin color. Racial treatment and profiling BY the law and those who enforce it. Masked by the law and those who enforce it. Ignored by the law and those who enforce it. So yeah....kill that noise.

[C-Dot]

Why am I not surprised this has turned into a latter issue of Cerebus?

Anyway.



Meshach Taylor as Hollywood Montrose in Mannequin. A strong character that is both gay and black. My favorite character from one of my favorite films.

I'm just putting it in there so I can read Orson Scott Card without have a flag thrown on the play.

Huh?

O........k.

Whatever floats the boat.

(Mannequin? With that Starship song that got stuck in people's heads?)