*Edit, just before I launch into my rant, thanks to ourchair for finding and posting this article. I do believe your commited to expanding our minds. Its quite novel.
Its really a shame how some people can develope. Paul O'Brien put out a really accurate view of homophobia in this article and this showed me something I never knew about Card before. It saddens me to know that someone who's talent I so respected suffers from this kind of thing. Because knowing this now, he is lowered in my opinion. I can't help but have a kind of contempt for someone so set in their ways that they can't accept the changing attitudes to homosexuality and I deeply regret that this is the dominant viewpoint of a huge number of people in the older age brackets particularly. This kind of set intolerance is one of the things that depresses and sometimes almost sickens me about old people. But its not confined to "elderly" old people. My friends parents are all around their mid 40s. When he came out to them, being kicked out of home was a serious possibility. To have this kind of cruelty and intolerance directed at ones own child disgusts me. Seriously. Thankfully, (for me too since I've known this guy and his friends since I was about 8), his parents were of the good variety. This isn't always the case.
As for the accusation (because thats the way its worded) that homosexuals often suffer their first sexual experience as rape, molestation or otherwise unwholesome deals, I can only say that yeah, its true. Maybe if vicious old men like Card spent more time helping out where they could "using their powers for good" as it were, instead of writing hysterical paranoid rants against something as simple as gay marriage, then maybe the world wouldn't put so much dangerous pressure on gays that they get pushed into places when bad things happen to them. The number of homosexuals who have been in abusive relationships at somepoint in their life is horrifying. Yet its still happening because there's so much stigma assosciated with it that normal teenage gay guys can't go to other teenage gay guys because they're either so deep in the closet they're out the other side, or so frightened themselves that they can end up in dangerous situations and unhealthy or even abusive relationships and have nowhere else to turn.
I'm just ranting about this because some of my friends copped some serious flack when they came out and that really woke me up to how entrenched homophobia is. I knew that it was "bad" before but I never realised just how dangerous it proves, both physically and mentally.
