Science Fiction, Political Correctness, and True Morality

by David Sims

I HEAR THAT American science fiction author Orson Scott Card has opposed gay “marriage.” Good on him. I oppose homosexuality in all respects, not simply marriage only. I think that the professional psychologists got it right the first time: It’s a mental disorder, a biological dysfunction, an aberration, an abnormality, a perversion of Nature. It spreads diseases that would not otherwise spread, or at least not as fast. It causes biomechanical deformities that lead to incontinence. It involves dangerous ancillary activities that can cause still more diseases and peritonitis.

Homosexuality is bad for the same general reason pedophilia is bad, for the same reason necrophilia is bad, for the same reason bestiality is bad. Legitimizing homosexuality is the first step on a slippery slope that will end up legitimizing all those other perversions, mostly by way of the same arguments about “tolerance.”

When it comes to Card’s Ender Wiggin saga, I approve of Ender’s Game, the first book, only. The idea that aliens would covet and desire to possess a rare jewel of a planet, such as Earth is, is eminently believable, sensible, and in accord with all we know about the universal struggle of life against life for possession of the means for continued survival.

But after the first book, Card ruined his series with the sappy sentiment that, Oh, the poor aliens didn’t really mean it. They didn’t know we were intelligent creatures with feelings! It was all a big mistake. Bleah. Not believable. Not at all. So the Ender Wiggin saga is the series that could have been great, but got itself philosophically undermined by an author who does, it appears, manage to conform to Political Correctness once in a while. Even if he was right about gay “marriage.”

If you want the philosophy of alien contact done right, look at Robert A. Heinlein’s Starship Troopers. Pay special attention to what goes on in the class of “Major Reid” in chapter 12. Here are a few excerpts:

Is it possible to abolish war by relieving population pressure (and thus do away with the all too evident evils of war) through constructing a moral code under which population is limited to resources?

Without debating the usefulness or morality of planned parenthood, it may be verified by observation that any breed which stops its own increase gets crowded out by breeds which expand. Some human populations did so, in Terran history, and other breeds moved in and engulfed them.

Nevertheless, let’s assume that the human race manages to balance birth and death, just right to fit its own planets, and thereby becomes peaceful. What happens?

Soon (about next Wednesday) the Bugs move in, kill off this breed which “ain’ta gonna study war no more” and the universe forgets us. Which still may happen. Either we spread and wipe out the Bugs, or they spread and wipe us out — because both races are tough and smart and want the same real estate….

* * *

[D]oes Man have any “right” to spread through the universe?

Man is what he is, a wild animal with the will to survive, and (so far) the ability, against all competition.

Unless one accepts that, anything one says about morals, war, politics — you name it — is nonsense.

Correct morals arise from knowing what Man is — not what do-gooders and well-meaning old Aunt Nellies would like him to be.

The universe will let us know — later — whether or not Man has any “right” to expand through it.

In the meantime the MI [Mobile Infantry] will be in there, on the bounce and swinging, on the side of our own race.

* * *

Source: Author