When Ender's Game author Orson Scott Card reacted last week to a proposed boycott of the upcoming film adaptation of his 1985 novel, what struck me most was his attitude that, notwithstanding his and others' vehement objections to marriage equality, the issue is pretty much a done deal.
Card, a National Organization for Marriage (NOM) board member, had previously labeled homosexuality a "deviant behavior" and called any government that supports same-sex marriage a "mortal enemy" that he would "act to destroy."
In response, some activists have called for a boycott of the upcoming film adaption of Ender's Game, to which Card replied:
Ender's Game is set more than a century in the future and has nothing to do with political issues that did not exist when the book was written in 1984. With the recent Supreme Court ruling, the gay marriage issue becomes moot. The Full Faith and Credit clause of the Constitution will, sooner or later, give legal force in every state to any marriage contract recognized by any other state. Now it will be interesting to see whether the victorious proponents of gay marriage will show tolerance toward those who disagreed with them when the issue was still in dispute.
If only it were so.
While there's no question that the recent Supreme Court decisions represent progress, there's also much work to be done. After all, marriage for same-sex couples is still illegal in 37 states.
And there's also more to the issue than legal equality. It's one thing for the state to allow you to marry, and another for your family to show up at your wedding and be happy for you. Both are important. As long as people continue to promote the idea that homosexuality is a "deviant behavior," the issue will be far from settled.
In 1992, while I was still a graduate student at the University of Texas at Austin, I gave a lecture entitled "What's Morally Wrong With Homosexuality?", responding to common objections to same-sex relationships. Over the years I honed the lecture in front of numerous (occasionally hostile) audiences across the country, and in 2007 I produced a DVD recording of it. (It is the basis for my latest book.)
Last week, the DVD's producers agreed to release the full lecture for free on YouTube. Our hope is that it will provide support to everyone struggling against the idea that there's something wrong/deviant/unnatural about same-sex relationships -- whether they live in marriage-equality states or not.
WATCH:
John Corvino is the author of What's Wrong With Homosexuality? and the co-author (with Maggie Gallagher) of Debating Same-Sex Marriage. More at his website.