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Alicorn comments on Open Thread: January 2010 - Less Wrong
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He believes that they are sinning. Mormons have a really complicated dolled-up afterlife, so if he's sticking to doctrine, he probably doesn't actually expect gays as a group to all go to Hell.
Edit: He did a gay guy in the Memory of Earth series too (the plot of which, I later found, is a blatant ripoff of the Book of Mormon). Like the gay guy in Songbird, this one ends up with a woman, although less tragically.
I have to say. It is an interesting coincidence that he has written two gay characters that end up with women. Especially since he is absolutely terrible at writing (heterosexual) sex scenes/sexuality- I mean really I've never read a professional writer who was worse at this.
Is there any significance to how OSC avoids using the standard terms for gay, but instead uses a made-up in-world term for it that you have to infer means "gay". (At least in the Memory of Earth series; I haven't read the other.)
wtf? that's the kwyjiboest thing I've ever seen. omg lol
I don't think it's a coincidence at all. The way I understand it is that under Mormon doctrine, the act, not the temptation towards the act, is what's a sin: so a gay character who marries a woman and (regardless of whether he actually has sex with her or not) refrains from extramarital sexual activity is just fine and dandy. The Songbird character didn't get married; the Memory of Earth one did. But the former, while not "demonized", was presented as a fairly weak person; the latter was supposed to be a generally decent guy.
Where does OSC even attempt to do so? He generally just leaves the actual sex scenes out of the books, to the best of my recollection. Would that Turtledove had shown similar restraint.
It has been a while since a read any Card but Folk of the Fringe included a really bizarre story about sex between a young white boy and an middle-aged native American. The Enders Game sequels almost all include ostensibly sexual relationships and he tries to describe aspects of that and moments when, presumably, the characters would be experiencing sexual attraction.
Ok, I was thinking more in terms of straight-out sex scenes, as in Turtledove, where the tab goes in the slot. I must say I didn't find OSC's writing on sexual attraction particularly awkward; what about it did you dislike so?
Sorry, really late reply. Was just looking over this thread and happened to see this.
Card's writing that involves sexual attraction just comes off as asexual. I never got the sense that the characters were actually sexually attracted to each other; affectionate maybe, but not aroused. It's like the way sexuality looks on tv, not the way people actually experience it. I recall reading Card himself say that he didn't think he was very good at writing about sex or sexual attractions in an interview or something. It might have been in the Folk of the the Fringe book somewhere but I can't find it in my library.
Ok, I guess I agree with that. He either cannot or will not write such that you feel the emotions associated with sexual attraction; it is an area where he tells rather than showing. Perhaps this is a deliberate choice based in his Mormon religion; he's also rather down on porn. Either way, though, it seems to me that his stories rarely suffer from this. To take an example, 'Empire' is way worse than the Ender sequels, but it's not because of the sex; indeed it has effectively zero sex in it, even of the kind you describe. Rather it suffers from being nearly-explicit propaganda.
I went back and checked my source (wikipedia); you're right, I'd mis-remembered.