memes

Tangentially related, or at least it made me think of it.

Orson Scott Card said this:

Ender’s childhood is based, albeit loosely, on my own; his relationship with Peter and Valentine is based, not on my actual relationship with my older brother and sister, but rather on the way I conceived those relationships to be when I was Ender’s age. Ender’s revised understanding of Peter late in life parallels in emotion the same revision I went through in my teens as I discovered… my childish view of my older brother was hopelessly wrong

For those that don't know, Peter abused the hell out of Ender. Not a huge spoiler. Another time he said this:

The dark secret of homosexual society … is how many homosexuals first entered into that world through a disturbing seduction or rape or molestation or abuse

Then he went on to write several of the same character. Either homosexual or asexual who takes a wife in order to raise children. But it's literally never about the woman. Anton was mostly open about his sexuality but married a woman. Ender had no sexual urges (there was a lot of underage homo-adjacent stuff and some sister stuff, but not necessarily gay) until he married. And did he marry her for her? Nope. The first thing he thinks of is how her 6 kids need him. Ansset is gay and married a woman. It's pretty obvious he believes a lot of folks are gay because they were abused and it's pretty obvious he was abused. And he believes those men should get married and raise children because that's the highest calling.

I'm not usually a "homophobic means closeted homosexual" but I'm of the firm belief that Card is so far in the closet he's finding Christmas presents.

Or they're bi. I grew up ultra religious and the choice explanation made more sense to me because I had both homo and hetero urges, and I assumed it was the same for everyone (I thought of people who claimed otherwise as self-righteous). In my mind at the time homosexual urges were just part of people's sinful nature they had to overcome. The whole thing only seems so incoherent from an outside perspective, which I was fortunately able to arrive at after experiencing the world more.

"if it was a choice, why wouldn't they just choose not to be gay instead of killing themselves?"

Props to gramma. A lot of conservative people honestly just would dismiss it with the backwards logic; "so stupid of them to kill themselves when they could've just chosen not to be gay".

I'm unsure whether they actually believe it themselves, though.