“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.” –– Orson Scott Card.

“Puh-leeze.

After twenty years of despicably virulent homophobia … no. This is just another detestable characterization of LGBT people — that we are intolerant.

Intolerant? Of people who want to lock us up, put us in concentration camps, deny us our civil rights? Intolerant? Are you fucking kidding me?

You want me to be tolerant, Scott? First be one of those people who understands. Or to put it bluntly — get your fucking foot off my neck, then we’ll talk tolerance.

See, Scott — I don’t dislike you. I honestly don’t. I think you’re a very interesting author and you’ve turned out some works I admire. But you’ve made PR Mistake Number One. You’ve sided with hate-mongers. You’ve targeted a minority and you’ve characterized yourself as the righteous warrior. That gives you a short-term gain and a long-term loss. Look up Father Coughlin and Anita Bryant and Kirk Cameron.

Now you’ve made PR Mistake Number Two — instead of honestly and sincerely apologizing for the hurt you have caused others, you have doubled down. You have played the martyr card, arguing that you are the victim.

What this demonstrates is that you have no idea of what the issue really is. It’s about the 1138 rights, privileges, benefits, and obligations attendant to the civil contract of marriage. It’s about social security benefits and inheritance and child custody and joint taxation and deathbed decisions and hospital visitation and adoption and community property and all the other things that you and your wife take for granted. It’s about equality in the eyes of the law.

This is the goal that women set out to achieve when they first demanded the right to vote. This is the goal that Dr. Martin Luther King set out to achieve for African-Americans and other minorities when he started the Montgomery bus boycott. This is the goal that Harvey Milk set out to achieve when he opposed CA’s Prop 6 and when he ran for the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.

Our nation was founded on the idea that “we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men (people) are created equal, endowed with certain inalienable rights — and that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

Your public statements, Orson Scott Card, put you on the wrong side of that declaration. Until you recognize that your public utterances have been at the service of bigotry and prejudice, there can be no redemption for you in the eyes of the LGBT community. Or anyone else, for that matter.”

The above was written and posted by openly gay and famed science fiction writer David Gerrold on his Facebook page.

Gerrold is best known for his scripts for the popular original Star Trek series notably the episode “The Trouble With Tribbles“, for creating the Sleestak race on the TV series Land of the Lost, and for his novelette The Martian Child,.