I cannot remember anything like that in anything of Le Guin’s writing.

At the same time I can still say that I wouldn’t touch this particular book with a ten foot pole. And i can tell the publisher that. They have every right in the world to ignore my opinion. or, possibly, they might take a second look and agree with me– possibly decide that they won’t publish homophobic– and mediocre– garbage just because there’s a famous name attached to it

“Goss used the pronoun that designates a male animal, not the pronoun for a human being in the masculine role of kemmer. He looked a little embarrassed. Karhiders discuss sexual matters freely, and talk about kemmer with both reverence and gusto, but they are reticent about discussing perversions—at least, they were with me. Excessive prolongation of the kemmer period, with permanent hormonal imbalance toward the male or the female, causes what they call perversion; it is not rare; three or four percent of adults may be physiological perverts or abnormals-normals, by our standard. They are not excluded from society, but they are tolerated with some disdain, as homosexuals are in many bisexual societies. The Karhidish slang for them is halfdeads. They are sterile.”

Notes:
-”Karhide” is a country on the planet Gethen.
-”Perversion” here means a person who is always male, or always female. Most Gethenians aren’t.
-”Bisexual societies” here means societies where the people are divided into two sexes. In Gethenian societies they aren’t.

To say that we have a moral obligation to speak out against X is not to deny that we also have a right to X. I think we have a right to be bigots. I also think we have a moral obligation to eschew bigotry, and to speak out against it.

.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.

O. S. Card’s essay “Homosexual “Marriage” and Civilization”

The thing is, Card does not see himself as “anti-gay” because he sees the goal as ridding the world of queerness as a positive thing for all those who’re queer. Anything done to stop us is for our own good.

As for this proposed boycott – no one is censoring his book, unless the government has swooped down and confiscated the whole Subterranean Press print run, or unless someone has demanded that a town library remove Hamlet’s Father from the library.

I have a better perspective on the mystery genre since I read a lot of books in that genre and worked in a mystery bookstore during college. As a general rule I think mystery novels have a deep concern with psychology because in order for the criminal characters to ring ‘true,” their crimes have to fit an overall psychological pattern so they don’t come across as two dimensional pieces in a puzzle. The secret inner lives of characters also come into play either as motivation for crime or as red herrings to mislead. A frequent theme is is the accused innocent (who often becomes the ‘detective’ character) so there’s no assumption that authority is always right. Even in police (or FBI, etc) procedurals the hero is often a ‘rogue’ who refuses to accept what others believe to be the obvious suspect, so even the police characters are often anti-authoritarian, “mavericks.” The righting of past wrongs is another frequent theme and often those wrongs were caused by past prejudices, whether they were racist, sexist, anti-Semitic, or homophobic in nature.

So I’d say that despite their focus on good and evil, right and wrong, mysteries are not reactionary at all and frequently deal in shades of gray, sympathetic “bad guys” (Dexter the “good” serial killer for instance) and very dislikable authorities. Really mysteries are more concerned with truth vs lies and proof IS required so “that’s just how those people are” doesn’t cut it except as motivation to look beneath that assumption for the truth.

Of course up through the 70s the evil gay killer was a genre standard but bad homos were standard in all genres. At best they were silly and useless. And the problem there wasn’t so much that the bad guy or girl was gay. There are bad gay people. The problem was, as it is in “Hamlet’s Father,” is their badness was portrayed as a function of their BEING gay, as if an equation existed where homosexuality = evil. An act of murder or sexual abuse by other character were portrayed as personal failings, not a stain on heterosexuality, but the bad deeds of gay characters were attributed to gayness itself as if one were the natural consequence of the other. The problem was also that gay characters didn’t show up except as villains so even if the portrayal was balanced the genre as a whole wasn’t. It was no different or better than books where Jews were always greedy or blacks were, de facto, lazy and criminal because in all those cases (again as in Card’s book) it denies those characters’ humanity and individuality, even responsibility since their evil acts are not really a personal choice, just the way “those people” are.

So no, generally mystery readers aren’t authoritarian despite the many authority figures in the genre. Mystery readers are more truth-seekers and, as Stephen Colbert said, “Reality has a well-known liberal bias.”

It also may be my limited perspective, but the acceptance and defense of extreme attitudes may be more common around the SF&F genre, something which I tend to attribute to persistent reactionary themes, such as the “great man” idea, romanticizing monarchy and authoritarianism, etc.. But that may just be a limited perspective- do fans of other genres, such as mystery and historical romance notice similar defenses of reactionary attitudes?

When Card delivered the manuscript, did you have any opportunity to evaluate it before the book was published? Would it have been possible for you to say “Not this novella, another one” even if it meant another year’s delay?

So don’t give me that “poor Orson Scott Card is the victim here!” business. He wrote what he wanted, it was published, and he was no doubt paid for it. Now it’s time for others to have their say in reaction to it, which is THEIR First Amendment right.

I’m just sorry that Subterranean Press got mixed up in this because, again, I don’t think that was their intent.