The Perversion of a Legend
I note a particular oddity in the ongoing debate about the legitimacy of the Hugo Award slate. For all the ink that has so for been spilled over it — including more than one libelous article hurredly retracted — no one is actually talking about it.
No one is talking about the merit of any of the works, mine or others, being judged.
Consider the irony of that for a moment. We masterminds of evil living in our villain lair in the cone of an extinct volcano in Antarctica are being accused of introducing politics and bloc voting into the Hugo Awards. Our main complaint is the the Hugo Awards in recent years have been a matter of politics hence not about the merit of the work. Our complaint is that meritorious works are being shut out; that the merit of the work is being ignored. And the response of our critics is …. to launch personal attacks, to attempt clumsy character assassination, besmirch and besmear our character, and never to talk about the merit of the works.
Point made; case closed.
I have so far found one and only one exception, and the comment is worthy of sustained and detailed mockery.
Here is the quote from the one and only one detractor who mentioned discontent with my work rather than badmouthing the author.
And even he only mentioned the writing in passing after several paragraphs of condemning me for badthink and thoughtcrime.
This is regrettable, but that’s what is to be expected when you recruit Vox Day for your side and champion John C. Wright, a guy who thinks there should be laws against sex outside of marriage.
(quoting me, emphasis his) I will gladly clarify: I am not a libertarian any more. I think the state has a right and a duty and a sacred obligation to enforce marriage laws, and put men in jail for adultery, for fornication, as well as to punish the johns and patrons of prostitutes with severe penalties: http://johncwright.livejournal.com/337756.html?nojs=1&thread=11474268
He also thinks that women must obey their husbands:
(quoting me) For her part, she must vow to love and honor and obey. And if you do not understand about that obey part, you do not understand women. She wants a leader, an alpha male, a chief, a Christ, and you must be willing to die for her as Christ was willing to die for you, or she will not feel secure in your love. If she does not swear to obey, you are not a couple, not a dyad, not a unit, but are still two sovereigns dealing with each other at arm’s length, not intimate, and she cannot trust you fully, cannot love you fully, not with a divine and self-sacrificing love. http://www.everyjoe.com/2014/07/16/politics/secret-to-the-most-mind-blowing-sex-ever/
And the less said about his views on LGBT people, the better.
But, you say, maybe he is a bigot, but they championed him because he wrote great fiction last year.
To which I say – try reading it without laughing at how bad it is. Believe me, it’s not easy.
Actually, no man not bereft of this wits says of me, maybe he is a bigot.
A sane man merely wishing to publish a libel or slander would invent a more credible falsehood and level a less absurd accusation, such as, for example, by saying I am an isosceles triangle seeking to overthrow the social order of the Polygons in Flatland, and that I must be bound with the magical gossamer ribbon gleipnir before I eat the sun and moon, leaving the world in darkness forever.
Bigotry is defined as a man who is utterly intolerant of any differing creed, belief, or opinion.
The words utterly intolerant do not mean respectfully and with endless, easygoing, and jovial clemency, patience, charity and magnanimity welcoming any disagreement with those of differing creed, belief and opinion, while never losing sight of their innate human dignity ergo treating them with scrupulous fairness, dispassionate justice, and princely courtesy. It means the opposite.
Except when fellows like this use the word. In his world, tolerance is bigotry, bigotry is tolerance, war is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength.
As for his disbelief about the nature of family law, this ignoramus would be well advised to go to his local library, get a copy of the statutes of the jurisdiction in which he lives, and read them.
Sex outside marriage is illegal in one third states of the United States, and adultery carries a criminal penalty in 23 of them: Virginia’s statute was overturned within the last ten years, and so was Georgia’s.
Before AD 1973 — not AD 1873, not AD 73, mind you, but AD 1973 — all fifty states had laws against fornication and adultery, as did the colonies before the United States was formed, as did Great Britain before the Reformation, as did Canon Law before the Fall of Rome, as did the folk law of all time running back to prehistory.
Pennsylvania abolished its fornication and adultery laws in AD 1973; West Virginia in AD 2010; Colorado in AD 2013; and New Hampshire in AD 2014. Last year, in other words.
As of the time of this writing, that is last year, so there is no point in talking of adultery laws as if they are as remote and unheard-of as the foot binding practices of the Eighteenth Century Chinese. My most recent haircut was more remote in the past than that.
Adultery remains a criminal offense in 25 jurisdictions, including the UCMJ (Uniform Code of Military Justice).
Hardly an innovation. One could with a straight face make the argument that my proposal that existing laws be upheld is a holdover from an ancient tradition which has outstayed its welcome: one cannot argue that my proposal is unheard-of, new, untried, or shocking.
One cannot argue my proposal is bigotry unless one is willing to imply that nowhere on Earth before AD 1973 in Pennsylvania did even a single non-bigot breathe air; and argue that all the previous generations of man through all ages, all nations outside the First World, and half the current states and commonwealths in the union, are all bigots!
One might find this to be a somewhat difficult claim to defend, indeed, a difficult claim to enunciate straight-faced without interrupting oneself with a snort of laughter.
What a benevolent situation for the modern, semi-educated semi-barbarian to find himself in! He is the superior of those honest men, whose works he never reads and whose names he does not know, who for all previous generations built the comfortable and successful civilization in which he lives, but whose laws, customs, mores and workings he cannot comprehend and cannot be bothered to attempt to comprehend.
The situation is not so benevolent for those of us who understand, maintain, and repair the machinery of civilization, condemned as we are to carry his deadweight mass.
* * *
The naivety, the tone of self imposed stupidity, in evidence here is merely shocking to me. Does he really not know the laws of the land in which he lives? Has he met no person over 29 years old, read no book over 49 years old, watched no black and white film?
You see, the fellow does not say “every race, nation, people, tribe and tongue mankind from prehistory to present day has always held fornication and adultery to be illegal, and I respectfully dissent from the titanically overwhelming majority, and disagree respectfully every philosopher, sage, saint, and literary figure in history, all the moral codes of mankind, and all the legal codes of civilization.”
No, he says, in the same tone of voice Pauline Kael used to express her shock at the landslide victory of Nixon, “Who has ever heard of making violations of marriage oaths illegal? It’s never been done before! Never been imagined!”
Such self-imposed ignorance would be charming if its inescapable results were not so putrid and unsightly.
* * *
As for my belief that women like masculine and masterful men, and that women are ergo unhappy with men they command and control, I suggest any skeptics go into the bookstore and look at the romance paperback rack.
My observation that love involves mutual surrender and selflessness is self-evident, and needs no defense nor explanation to lovers, and cannot be explained to the loveless.
Why he dismisses the self surrender of love as bigotry with the same rational disquisition and rhetorical subtlety as was employed by the pod usurping Donald Sutherland‘s character in the last frame of the 1979 remake of INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS, we must leave to necroneuropathologists to discover in autopsy, if that be the proper name for a scientific discipline that studies dead brains.
* * *
As for the rest, my views on LGBTWXYZ people are shocking, and the dunderbrains are well advised to steer clear of conversation with me, lest any man discover what my views are, and be shocked when he finds shattered the childish narrative needed for maintaining the proper air and tone of smug, petty, and sneering yet invincible ignorance.
- I believe, profess, and unambiguously support the view that homosexuals must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity.
- I believe, profess, and unambiguously support the view that every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided.
- I believe, profess, and unambiguously support the view that these persons are called to fulfill God’s will in their lives and, if they are Christians, to unite to the sacrifice of the Lord’s Cross the difficulties they may encounter from their condition.
- I believe everything the one, true, holy, catholic and apostolic Church teaches.
I also believe homosexuals who get baptized and live their lives in imitation of Christ receive His abundant grace and dwell after this life with Him in paradise, there to be arrayed in more splendor than any crowned king, transfigured in shining glory unimaginable to human eyes, and made beautiful and fair with the radiance of divine love, exalting in infinite joy forever.
I think lust is a sin and that pride is a worse sin. Any man who demeans a homosexual for being afflicted with same-sex sexual attraction is guilty of pride. Look to your own sins, Pharisee. It is akin to mocking a drunk afflicted with alcoholism.
However, those who think it right and just, a holy crusade, and a way of sticking to The Man, to offer a drunk a drink, and hand him the car keys to drive, and urge him to his destruction, knowing he is afflicted — such a vile, pitiless, foolish and ghastly hypocrites as this are guilty of something far worse than pride, and will answer a far sterner judge than I for the crime. The pity and respect I owe and show homosexuals struggling with their perversion I do not owe to those who undermine that struggle, or belittle it.
* * *
I also think that two opposite sexes are needed for mating, and that marriage is a mating ritual used to establish chastity hence paternity, ergo the ritual is not merely unneeded, but actually absurd and pointless, if used to celebrate the erotic non-mating behaviors of two or more non-mates not of the opposite sex, where neither chastity is sought nor paternity is possible.
Sorry for shocking you with my bigotry. In the old days, bigotry was called logic.
One of the greatest innovations of postmodernism is the removal of all traces of logic from public discourse.
* * *
How any of this makes me out to be a racist, as Entertainment Weekly announced, and several unmanly anonymous gits repeated, I am still awaiting an explanation. That word, back in the days where words had meaning, meant one who holds one race or bloodline innately superior in all respects to another, who must be dominated, enslaved, or killed as inferiors.
While I do not care for Klingons or Puppeteers or Overlords of Delgon personally, I believe them to be equal in legal and moral dignity to man.
Racism is not saying, Let’ us judge science fiction awards based on the merit of the work rather than based on the race of the author. Indeed, judging by merit, hence not by race, is the very definition of the opposite of racism.
Of course, in the world without logic, any word can have any meaning, and any conclusion can follow from any combination of premises, hence:
1. All mimsy were the borogroves
2. I’m hungry. Who wants a toasted cheese sandwich?
3. Therefore John C Wright is a white supremacist!
See how simple that is?
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
