It’d be a helluva lot bigger if it was comprehensive. But it’s not. It also suffers from being inaccurate in some respects: for example, I’d hardly call Orson Scott Card’s novel Songmaster a “gay male novel” (though at this writing the Wikipedia article does) simply because the novel depicted sexual behavior between two males: Card himself is vigorously antigay and has described the same-sex sexual relationship in his novel as “destructive”. Calling it a “gay male novel” gives the false impression that it was either written by a gay male author, or gave a positive treatment to a gay male relationship within it. Neither is true.

Which isn’t to say it’s not true of many of the other stories/novels in the list.

I think most of the stories that explore these themes do it for the novelty factor though, or, in the case of Star Trek, often even for comic effect.

You don’t get many stories with just an ordinary same sex couple, where their sexuality has no real affect on the story but just happens to ‘be’ – i.e. like every hetrosexual relationship in practically every sci fi novel and Hollywood movie ever.

“Novelty factor” is not the most accurate term here. There’s a lot of ways for fiction w/ LGBT themes to go, & to some extent there’s been an evolution to it too. Lesbian-themed SF/F, for example, has been influenced a lot by feminist criticism of patriarchy, or of just plain old sick-and-tiredness about being stuck in the real societies we live in which are full of both hostility toward same-sex relationships, along with all the male privilege stuff that even now still means men by & large have greater access to economic and political power than women. Therefore, there’s a lot of earlier lesbian-themed SF/F with female-only or female-dominated societies, in which lesbian relationships are the norm in at least some part of the story universe — e.g., The Wanderground by Sally Miller Gearhart, The Female Man by Joanna Russ. It’s not only lesbian authors who have explored that kinda stuff either. Suzy McKee Charnas, author of the four-novel Holdfast Chronicles, is a heterosexual woman; John Varley, author of the Gaea trilogy, which includes a bisexual female protagonist and another main character from a lesbian-separatist space colony, is male.

But there are plenty of novels where lesbian or gay male relationships are just part of the facts of character’s lives. Melissa Scott’s Trouble and Her Friends has a lesbian main character, and there are lots of references to antigay prejudice that she faces — but that’s not the tale’s main theme, either, nor is it in a lot of other stuff Scott writes. Kelley Eskridge’s Solitaire which isn’t in that list but should be; Nicola Griffith’s Slow River, C.J. Cherryh’s Cyteen and more recent Regenesis (set in the same story universe) both have two gay male couples who are major characters, and whose relationships are just assumed accepted parts of their lives.

Those are just a few examples. It’s a lot wider area than you think.

Yonmei’s post tells the story of Alan Turing, arguably the founder of computer science, arguably the man whose contributions more than any other single person’s contributed to the Allied victory over Nazi Germany in WWII because of his work in cryptography. Turing, too, was chemically castrated because he’d had a sexual relationship with a man: that was the only choice he had other than imprisonment when the British courts found him guilty of homosexuality under the reprehensible laws it had at the time. Turing committed suicide not long after.

Would Card advocate for a real human person — not just a fictional character — be chemically castrated? Well, he has said this (as quoted by Yonmei):

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 who flagrantly violate society’s regulation of sexual behavior cannot be permitted to remain as acceptable, equal citizens within that society.

The goal of the polity is not to put homosexuals in jail. The goal is to discourage people from engaging in homosexual practices in the first place, and, when they nevertheless proceed in their homosexual behavior, to encourage them to do so discreetly, so as not to shake the confidence of the community in the polity’s ability to provide rules for safe, stable, dependable marriage and family relationships.

Too bad for Card that the U.K. no longer jails or chemically castrates people just for homosexual behavior, selectively or not. Too bad for Card that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled anti-sodomy laws unconstitutional a few years ago. But he very clearly believes in discrimination against gay people. I was almost going to say “at least if they are sexually active” — but that’s not true either. Demanding that gay people can only be considered equal citizens if they are celibate — like permitting his homosexual character Zdorab in the Homecoming Saga to be heroic only if he’s celibate (or at least doesn’t do it with another man) — is in itself discriminatory.

It’s also hateful, because no matter what Card or other “I don’t hate homosexuals” homophobes want to claim, they are acting in hatred when they substitute their own preconceptions and prejudices for our — lesbians’ and gay men’s — self-knowledge with their (the homophobes’) claim that homosexual orientation is not innate to us, is not the way that we were made and born to be. And demand us to deny and hate that aspect of ourselves. What is more hateful than that?

The fact that their preconceptions derives from “scripture” is of no mind. Religious believers can claim however much they like that the Bible or the Book of Mormon or whatever other religious text sprang fully formed from the mind of God, like Athena from the mind of Zeus. But I know that every religious text, like any other text, is written down by human hands, and is filtered through human minds, complete with all the prejudices humans are prey to. I respect and admire much that I find in religious texts. But thanks to human prejudices, much of it is just as reprehensible as the law that destroyed the life of Alan Turing. Or the laws that Card wishes were still on the books.

I think this site talks about this a bit: http://www.fallwell.com/ingnored%20old%20testament%20verses.html

Allow me to explain, as I believe I was in a similar boat with Card not so long ago.

I was raised Catholic (I still am, although a bit lasped internally), which believes that while having a homosexual orientation is not a sin, homosexual acts are. Which means the only acceptable choice for a Catholic homosexual is celibacy. However, the Catholic church does encourage acceptance of gays and lesbians and is against discrimination or attacks against them (this is if you ignore than ban on gay marriage as “discrimination”). As a devout Catholic, I wanted very badly to accept the idea of homosexuality, but my doctrine taught me it was wrong (as is all sex outside of marriage, natch).

Later, I changed by beliefs a bit, and now I can accept homosexuality entirely without and ifs, ands, or buts. However, there are many people who are likely where I was, and they can’t change it becasue it’s what they honestly believe. I suspect Card might be an example–he WANTS to be accepting of gays and lesbians, and he certainly isn’t/doesn’t intend to be/doesn’t support the idea of discrimination (the character Zdorab’s history in the Homecoming Saga makes that clear), he doesn’t believe homosexual acts are morally acceptable (I noticed, upon rethinking it, that once Zdorab becomes a hero he also become celibate, or at least not sexually active with other men). All I can say is, his loss.

You don’t get many stories with just an ordinary same sex couple, where their sexuality has no real affect on the story but just happens to ‘be’ – i.e. like every hetrosexual relationship in practically every sci fi novel and Hollywood movie ever.

Strangely though, his entry in the bio smacks of his philosophy in Speaker for the Dead. For those not familiar with this book, a young boy and his sister are recruited to play video games. What they think are games are actually real battles. The young boy wipes out the enemy. Later, when he is grown, he empathizes with the enemy and realizes he destroyed them for no reason. He and his sister spend the rest of their lives flying through hyperspace to witness for dead people, dead people who were in some cases very bad people. The man tries to tell the story of the person in such a way as to show the community in which the person lived the reason for the person’s bad ways. So, in some sad, twisted way, Mr. Card feels that he is speaking for us, the homosexual. Perhaps Ender Wiggins was Mr. Card’s outlet to speak for his own personal fears, i.e., I have this sin, but see there was a reason.

I dunno. My mother is a Latter Day Saint, and yet she loves and accepts me as I am. Besides she doesn’t own the magic underwear, and refuses to give up caffine and oral sex out of wedlock (I will burn for that).

I really like this statement, Mel.

“As a lesbian citizen of Anchorage, for whom the Summer of Hate is a very recent and very lasting memory, it’s how I intend to conduct myself in my day-to-day life: to live openly, happily, and fully as who I am — knowing full well that eventually, even the likes of Jerry Prevo and Eddie Burke will fall away.”

I should feel down after the veto, but like you, I feel strangely positive and uplifted. Whatever strange forces act upon Orson Scott Card, his book brought out compassion in me, and I am a better person for it, and nothing he says can change that fact.

Therese: I’ve read only one book of Card’s Homecoming Saga — I found it interesting because it its a science-fictional retelling of the Book of Mormon (at least, as far as I read). I don’t remember too much about it beyond that. I find recasting of familiar myths (as familiar as the Book of Mormon is to me… which is only partial) fascinating, besides which I’m always fascinated by how religion affects people’s thinking… so I always intended to read the whole series through — but if I do, it’ll only be in used paperbacks, where the $ is going to Title Wave (used bookstore) not to him. I’m very familiar with his Ender Wiggin novels & most of the related Shadow series. I like the second of his Ender novels, Speaker for the Dead, the best. The office of Speaker for the Dead is a sort of religious office: a Speaker delves into the life history of the deceased and tells it all at their death, good & bad & all in-between, unvarnished except that in the telling there’s just a plain acceptance of all that a person was, which can be pretty darn difficult but also potentially profoundly healing for the deceased person’s survivors. The first Speaker for the Dead — who was in fact Ender himself — spoke (or rather, wrote) the stories of the alien Bugger species that he had destroyed in the first novel Ender’s Game, as well as that of his seemingly sociopathic brother — so there’s some deep delving into the alien & even hateful, with compassion. And yet… Card, after writing that book, that character, can’t find it within himself to learn anything other than official Mormon doctrine about LGBT people? How can you understand anyone if you begin with judgment? But that’s what he does. So something’s deeply off there.

Hey, Joe, thanks for reading. I’ll be giving you a call in the next couple of days about that other thing we talked about last week.

Yo, Heather. I really like Jacqueline Carey’s books. A lot. Besides depicting both heterosexual & same-sex relationships with lots of depth, she’s also very sex-positive: sexuality across its full spectrum viewed as a good thing, except when coerced, which makes quite a different world from those we’re used to. Re: Wright — I’m don’t actually know his stuff, but if he’s using faux/lesbian innuendo, well — a fascination w/ lesbians is common enough among heterosexual men even when they’re vastly homophobic. Just look at porn. (Or not.) If I ever read his stuff, as with any else of Orson Scott Card’s stuff — it’ll only be in used paperbacks.