Sci-fi is often praised for its ability to use technologically advanced future scenarios to act as a mirror on current events. Usually, these broad, galaxy-hopping tales allow readers to realize the small scope of their petty, childish personal and political issues, giving them a chance to reframe their rigid moral belief systems. Star Trek, Star Wars, Dune, the Foundation series — all unified by common lessons of love and the tragic costs of hate. Which is why it is no small irony that Orson Scott Card is homophobic.

It is both funny and sad that such a gifted writer has nothing worthwhile to say on the subject of LGBTA rights. Instead, backed by his tired religious convictions, he makes the same, dry, awful arguments that we’ve come to expect from our basement-dwelling politicians. The great-great-grandson of award-winning polygamist Brigham Young moralizing against social taboos? With that hilarious hypocrisy, he might as well be touring with Dave Chappelle.

To the people who still deny Orson Scott Card’s homophobia, feel free to read the man’s own words below and offer a context to make them seem any less despicable than they clearly appear to be. If there is an appropriate context for claiming that gays and lesbians are simply the confused byproducts of rape, I’m all ears. Until then, let’s all go out to see that Ender’s Game movie and try to forget that the man behind it has threatened to bring down the government if it legalizes same-sex marriage.

“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 the Church has no the authority to tell its members that they may not engage in homosexual practices, then it has no authority at all. And if we accept the argument of the hypocrites of homosexuality that their sin is not a sin, we have destroyed ourselves.”

“The dark secret of homosexual society — the one that dares not speak its name — is how many homosexuals first entered into that world through a disturbing seduction or rape or molestation or abuse, and how many of them yearn to get out of the homosexual community and live normally.”

“There is a myth that homosexuals are ‘born that way,’ and we are pounded with this idea so thoroughly that many people think that somebody, somewhere, must have proved it.”

-“Homosexual ‘Marriage’ and Civilization,” in The Ornery American, 2004 (source)

“No matter how sexually attracted a man might be toward other men, or a woman toward other women, and no matter how close the bonds of affection and friendship might be within same-sex couples, there is no act of court or Congress that can make these relationships the same as the coupling between a man and a woman.”

“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.”

“Legalizing gay marriage is not about making it possible for gay people to become couples. It’s about giving the Left the power to force anti-religious values on our children. Once they legalize gay marriage, it will be the bludgeon they use to make sure that it becomes illegal to teach traditional values in the schools.”

-“What Right Is Really At Stake?” in The Ornery American, 2012 (source)

“There’s no need to legalize gay marriage. I have plenty of gay friends who are committed couples; some of them call themselves married, some don’t, but their friends treat them as married. Anybody who doesn’t like it just doesn’t hang out with them.”

“Ender’s Game is set more than a century in the future and has nothing to do with political issues that did not exist when the book was written in 1984… It will be interesting to see whether the victorious proponents of gay marriage will show tolerance toward those who disagreed with them when the issue was still in dispute.”