Sep 10, 2013

Equality NC Responds to Appointment of Anti-Gay Author to UNC-TV Board

Raleigh, N.C. — Equality NC responded today to the news that controversial anti-gay author Orson Scott Card has been named to the UNC-TV Board of Trustees, appointed by Senate President Pro Tem Phil Berger, R-Guilford. Card, a Greensboro resident who once compared Barack Obama to Adolf Hitler, was appointed this week to the board for a two-year term.

"Senate President Pro Tem Phil Berger's nomination of controversial author Orson Scott Card to the UNC-TV Board of Trustees is just one more step from a small, radical group within our state which is attempting to move North Carolina in reverse," said Chris Sgro, executive director of Equality NC. "We are obviously disappointed and deeply concerned that someone who has been a board member of the nation's leading anti-gay, anti-equality organization (National Organization for Marriage or NOM) is now poised to lead one of the state's most important sources for news and information, UNC-TV. It is our sincere hope that Card's strident anti-gay views will not inform the programming and mission of one of the crown jewels of our North Carolina's public university system - our statewide public broadcasting network."

Among Card's anti-gay resume:

-- National anti-gay organization, National Organization For Marriage board member

-- Suggests married heterosexuals should work to overthrow a government that has marriage equality: "If America becomes a place where our children are taken from us by law and forced to attend schools where they are taught that cohabitation is as good as marriage, that motherhood doesn't require a husband or father, and that homosexuality is as valid a choice as heterosexuality for their future lives, then why in the world should married people continue to accept the authority of such a government? What these dictator-judges do not seem to understand is that their authority extends only as far as people choose to obey them. How long before married people answer the dictators thus: Regardless of law, marriage has only one definition, and any government that attempts to change it is my mortal enemy. I will act to destroy that government and bring it down, so it can be replaced with a government that will respect and support marriage, and help me raise my children in a society where they will expect to marry in their turn."

-- Says gay people's marriages "strike a death blow" against straight people's unions: "So if my friends insist on calling what they do "marriage," they are not turning their relationship into what my wife and I have created, because no court has the power to change what their relationship actually is. Instead they are attempting to strike a death blow against the well-earned protected status of our, and every other, real marriage. They steal from me what I treasure most, and gain for themselves nothing at all. They won't be married. They'll just be playing dress-up in their parents' clothes."

-- In 1990, wrote column saying gays must repent: "The Church has plenty of room for individuals who are struggling to overcome their temptation toward homosexual behavior. But for the protection of the Saints and the good of the persons themselves, the Church has no room for those who, instead of repenting of homosexuality, wish it to become an acceptable behavior in the society of the Saints. They are wolves in sheep's clothing, preaching meekness while attempting to devour the flock." (*In 2004, he said he stands by the main points of the essay)

-- Suggests gays are innately unhappy and that many were raped, molested, or abused into being: "The dark secret of homosexual society -- the one that dares not speak its name -- is how many homosexuals first entered into that world through a disturbing seduction or rape or molestation or abuse, and how many of them yearn to get out of the homosexual community and live normally. It's that desire for normality, that discontent with perpetual adolescent sexuality, that is at least partly behind this hunger for homosexual 'marriage.' They are unhappy, but they think it's because the rest of us 'don't fully accept them.' Homosexual 'marriage' won't accomplish what they hope. They will still be just as far outside the reproductive cycle of life. And they will have inflicted real damage on those of us who are inside it. They will make it harder for us to raise children with any confidence that they, in turn, will take their place in the reproductive cycle. They will use all the forces of our society to try to encourage our children that it is desirable to be like them."

-- In Op-Ed supporting Amendment One in North Carolina, said marriage equality is not about marriage but rather "about giving the left the power to force anti-religious values on our children." Added: "Once they legalize gay marriage, it will be the bludgeon they use to make sure that it becomes illegal to teach traditional values in the schools."

-- Refers to gays as people with "sex-role dysfunctions": "That many individuals suffer from sex-role dysfunctions does not change the fact that only heterosexual mating can result in families where a father and a mother collaborate in rearing children that share a genetic contribution from both parents."

-- Wrote column chastising the Supreme Court for overturning sodomy laws

-- More "ex-gay" advocacy, again referring to homosexuality as a "dysfunction": "In fact, the scientific evidence we have points in the opposite direction: Same-sex attraction is not a strait jacket; people's desires change over time; gay people still have choices; a reproductive dysfunction like same-sex attraction is not a death sentence for your DNA or for your desire to have a family in which children grow up with male and female parents to model appropriate gender roles. Heterosexual pair-bonding has been at the heart of human evolution from the time we divided off from the chimps. Normalizing a dysfunction will only make ours into a society that corrodes any loyalty to it, as parents see that our laws and institutions now work against the reproductive success (not to mention happiness) of the next generation."

-- From 2000 Salon interview: “I find the comparison between civil rights based on race and supposed new rights being granted for what amounts to deviant behavior to be really kind of ridiculous. There is no comparison. A black as a person does not by being black harm anyone. Gay rights is a collective delusion that’s being attempted. And the idea of ‘gay marriage’ — it’s hard to find a ridiculous enough comparison."