Well, we are getting pretty far afield. But I feel mildly curious as to why I didn't get my point across before, so here goes.

Orson Scott Card wrote the scenario I described with the African-American character. I compared this to his Homecoming series in order to illustrate why my view of his writing in general has changed in the time since I read the two stories. Today I have no wish to read Card and cannot fully enjoy stories I enjoyed before. (Hence I did not recall Shedemei's name.)

Immediately after reading the other series I would have rejected any claim that the DNA scene had a racist message. Clearly, the author constructed the scenario that made that scene possible in order to convey an anti-racist message. No reasonable person, I thought, would approve of the bigoted society (replete with legal violence and threats) that led to the events in question. It seemed to follow that no reasonable reader could take that scene as a model for society to follow.

I had exactly the same reaction when I read Homecoming for the first time. It seemed self-evident that Shedemei's marriage etc could never happen without violence, and other oppression, of the sort that the gay character describes. "Therefore" (I might have said) the author plainly did not intend it as a model or as the One True Moral Path for gay people.

It turns out Card sees the matter differently. The link has him explicitly making a host of statements inconsistent with my previous impression, including an endorsement of legal violence to discourage homosexuality. ("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 whoflagrantly violate society's regulation of sexual behavior cannot be permitted to remain as acceptable, equal citizens within that society. " Emphasis added.) After discovering this I lost all trust in his thinking.