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If you feel it's right to discontinue reading his books, do that. It's what he would probably encourage you to do.
If you are conflicted about it, try to determine what your motivation is for wanting to keep reading. If it's a good desire then by all means read on.
Know you aren't the only one who tackled this issue.
That said forum rules prohibit disparaging him, and calling him a terrible person falls under that. Could you edit you post to not be attacking him personally?
Posts: 1194 | Registered: Jun 2010
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quote:Originally posted by Professor: I like to think I am open-minded enough to respect someone whose views are highly different from my own. However, Card crosses the line for me in one major field: he is openly, radically, and hatefully anti-gay. This is a cause that transcends politics. I cannot respect someone who is so hateful to homosexuals--someone who goes so far as to actively campaign against their human rights. The issue here is not that he is different from me. It is that he is actively hateful against peoples who have done nothing wrong.
Hello, Professor.
I wouldn't say OSC is hateful towards gays, I'd say he considers gay marriage to be harmful towards society. I, and as I believe, you, disagree with him on that, but here you clearly accuse him of hate, which I don't see in him. It is not evil to campaign against something you believe is wrong. I assume I know your views in this matter, as they are predominant amongst my friends, and there is one thing that always bothered me, is that you're making a huge deal out of it. It's not like he supports slavery or shariah law, and you make this a sole reason to call him a "pretty terrible person", "an ass", "so awful", his actions as "cult-like".
At the same time you are saying that him being a Mormon doesn't "bother you inherently" and that he is "saying terrible things about Obama", it makes you sound definitely comitted to the one side of the debate and when you say "his is a cause that transcends politics." Well, it doesn't. There are really few things that are like this, and this is definitely a political one and not universally accepted, not by any standard. Definitely not a moral one.
Plus, adding "human" before "rights" doesn't really make it sound any more serious. Don't get me wrong, I support gay rights, but it is really a cheap offensive tactic to paint your opponent as "anti-human" this way.
I think that boycotting him is your right and if you want, then just go straight ahead. But thanks to OSC's works I learned to listen to ideas and views that are totally different from my own, and I think this is a valuable thing. Maybe such a provocative person would be beneficial to your worldview and your opennes towards other ideas.
Remember that gay marriage was unthinkable and illegal for the last thousands of years and that it's there for the last what, 10 or 20 years? Views on gay rights aren't a universal, moral compass all of the sudden.
Posts: 723 | Registered: Dec 2004
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Maybe in the West but accepting gay people is way older than homophobia. There are other cultures besides western European ones. Many native American nations accepted homosexuality and a lot of other cultures.
Posts: 9942 | Registered: Mar 2003
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"accepting gay people is way older than homophobia" I have no idea how anyone would go about establishing this for certain.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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