Yesterday I wrote our opponents love to claim they’re persecuted simply for opposing same-sex marriage — claiming it so falsely and frequently, I now interpret simply as code for there’s so much we’re not telling you.
I didn’t expect to have another example so soon.
It seems author Orson Scott Card is slated to write a Superman series for DC Comics. People are petitioning DC to dump him for his past statements on gays, and Brian Brown is outraged.
NOM President Brian Brown told Fox News he was simply stunned that gay rights activists are trying to destroy a man’s career.
“This is completely un-American and it needs to be stopped,” Brown said. “Simply because we stand up for traditional marriage, some people feel like it’s okay to target us for intimidation and punishment.”
Brown called the attacks on Card frightening and said it’s another example of gay rights activists trying to punish those who believe marriage should be a union between a man and woman.
There’s that “simply” again (emphasis added). But how simple is it?
In 1990, Card wrote this:
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.
Why, what’s so awful about that? He doesn’t even want to through all gays in jail. Just the uppity ones. And that was 1990. Perhaps Card has moderated his views.
Hmm.
Compare this from his 1990 article:
No act of violence is ever appropriate to protect Christianity from those who would rob it of its meaning.
To this, which he wrote in 2008:
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. [emphasis added]
…
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.
If anything Card has grown more extreme, moving from mere intolerant bigotry to threats of outright treason.*
NOM is trying desperately to claim people are persecuted “simply” for opposing same-sex marriage, and as an example, NOM offers up a man who calls from the imprisonment of gay people and who thinks the violent overthrow of the government is a justifiable response to marriage equality.
It’s time for NOM to answer this question: If your claims are so good…why is your evidence so bad?
*The First Amendment guarantees that talk of treason is not inherently treasonous. Card would have to act on his threat or incite imminent lawless action to be guilty. So far, with same-sex marriage legal in the east, the west, and the middle of the country, Card hasn’t followed through with his threat, revealing himself to be an empty, belligerent blowhard, which is not itself treasonous.