You may remember seeing Stone’s name on the Nebula Awards list not too long ago.  He won for “That Leviathan, Whom Thou Hast Made,” a story I have not had the pleasure to read, and a story I will never read now that I know a little something about what the author thinks about my mother and some of my closest friends, their friends, and, most of all, children. You see, I discovered something very interesting about Stone through Outer Alliance, a community for readers and fans of LGBT people/characters in SF/F.  He’s a homophobe.  And not just any kind of homophobe.  A very special brand of homophobe.  We’ve all encountered everyday homophobes — the kind of people who just don’t care for gay people.  Some of them are alright folks.  Misguided?  Perhaps, but you can’t win them all. In 2006, Stone commented on a post called “Perfecting the Saints in Utero” at Times and Seasons.  The post, written by Adam Greenwood, discusses whether genetic modification to change a baby’s sexual orientation is morally acceptable in a society where such powers are available (and, obviously, where homosexuality is found to be genetic either as an actual set of genes or a “mutation” as a result of the mother’s hormones, etc.). Stone, in comment #21, responded by using deaf people as an example for whether it would be acceptable to genetically modify a child if it were found to be deaf.  Shortly after, he removed “deaf” and replaced it with “homosexual” in some strange attempt to prove that the two things are mutually inclusive. Here is the section as he wrote it about homosexuals (there are some errors, but you get the idea) (after the fold): Now that I’ve offended the zealots of deafness, it’s time for me to offend the zealots of homosexuality. Homosexuality is a defect. That doesn’t mean homosexual people aren’t human, of course. Neither does it mean they should be treated as less human than those who are heterosexual. There are people who are homosexual but who have gone on to to great things — in some cases motivated by their homsexuality. Of course, there are some homosexual people who seem to define their essential being by their deafness. They insist that homosexuality is not a defect. But no matter how much we love and appreciate homosexual people, it doesn’t change the fact that they do not have something that, by design, they are supposed to have: hearing. (The reproductive organs weren’t put there just to provide sexual pleasure, after all.) From a gospel perspective, we believe that when we are resurrected, our bodies will be made whole. That would presumably include correcting defects one is born with. (Recall that Jesus healed the man who was born blind, rather than say, “He was born that way, so that’s the way he’s meant to be.”) So I don’t think correcting those defects through medical science in advance of the resurrection is problematic. If a child’s genes showed it was going to be born homosexual, I see nothing morally wrong with changing that. On the other hand, from the gospel perspective, I do see something morally wrong with homosexual parents who are so adamant about there being nothing wrong with homosexuality that they purposely try to concieve homosexual children. (Note that there is a moral difference between homosexual parents knowing that there is a possibility or even a certainty that a child they concieve will be homosexual, and intentionally choosing for the child to be homosexual when it could have been avoided.) You read that right.  Eric James Stone believes it is morally acceptable to genetically modify babies to get rid of their homosexual genes, and that it is morally reprehensible for homosexual (or otherwise) parents to try to conceive homosexual children (but somehow semi-OK if they conceive homosexual children by accident).  Why?  Because, like blindness, homosexuality is, in Stone’s opinion, a genetic defect. Let’s not pretend that this is anything we haven’t heard before.  Because we have.  And we’ve certainly heard similar opinions in the genre community too, especially from the LDS camp (Orson Scott Card, for example).  They’re a crazy lot, I suppose, with so much hatred filling their souls that they’ve become rotten in their hearts (edit:  to clarify, I don’t mean all Mormon’s are like this, though my language choice here does have some continuity problems which would suggest otherwise.  The “crazy lot” should refer to those individuals who hold similar opinions rather than to all Mormons.  A fail on my part).  And Stone is certainly up there with the rottenest of them all.  This is a man who has no problem with genetically modifying babies (but would not support abortion, I assume, because that would be murder; yet it’s okay to remove one’s “essence,” since that would somehow be loving or something like that). Homosexuality, if we’re being fair, is not like deafness or blindness at all.  Unlike those medical conditions, homosexuality does not create a negative for the child’s wellbeing (in the sense of physical challenges which make it difficult to function in normal society).  The only negative for homosexuals is cultural, rather than physical.  The only barrier to reproduction for homosexuals (real or surrogate) are the laws and social codes we’ve created which ostracize them from hetero-normative culture.  To make matters worse, we have a culture of homophobia which makes it, in many cases, morally and socially acceptable to treat homosexuals (and particularly homosexual children) as sub-human. In fact, while Stone can pretend that he believes homosexuals should be treated like anyone else, that opinion is belied by his own words.  This is a man who would destroy the person you were meant to be because you, the homosexual, are a genetic defect.  You’re not human.  You’re less than human.  In fact, you’re so low on the human scale that you’re expendable.  It’s okay to commit genocide against you, because you’re not “normal.”  Homosexuals must not exist.  They should be culled

If you follow me on Twitter, then you might already know about the recent disaster to land on my steps.  If you don’t, then you’re in for a treat. Recently I became obsessed with A Game of Thrones by George R. R. Martin, much like many other people did ten years ago (or in the last few years, as is the case with Carraka, who graced these pages earlier today in my bizarre rant about characters from the book).  I managed to get my mother into the series long before I could stomach it (I’ll explain this some other time), and when I got myself hooked on the first book, I started looking for the next three in the series.  This search led me to call my mother, who has a great bookshop near her, and the end result was that my mother would gift me the next three (my own copies, rather than hers) and a whole bunch of homemade foods (jam, apple butter, applesauce, apple pie filling, and so forth).  I like to pretend this was a loving gesture. As such, I’ve been anticipating the day that the box would arrive, because I desperately want to read Martin’s work in hard copy.  I love my Nook, but nothing beats a mass marking paperback in my hands when I’m walking.  MMPs feel…right. A week-ish went by, and finally the box arrived (today), marked a number of times with the term “fragile” (fra-gee-lay as they say in A Christmas Story).  Instead of a well-kept package, I found this (after the fold): We’ll get to the brown discoloration in the corner in a moment.  This box was not handled “with care” at all.  It’s quite obvious that the box was treated as any other box might be treated if it were sent to a recycling company.  Not only has it been brutally smashed from the start, but USPS made no effort to correct what was clearly a terrible mistake by giving the box better treatment. But the worst part isn’t the condition of the box.  A beat up box can be lived with.  If the package only contained books, I could, perhaps, forgive a little beating provided the books were in good condition.  Sadly, USPS treated my package so poorly that some of the non-book-contents of the box were smashed into tiny pieces of glassy goop.  That brown discoloration I mentioned earlier?  That’s jam.  And not just any jam.  Festering jam.  The box has been sitting in southern heat for days (two weekends worth) and the stink from within the box is unidentifiable.  I have no idea what kind of jam it is because the identifying bits were crushed away too.  All I have is a goop inside the box.  There’s jam everywhere.  Worst of all, on my brand new copies of the next three books in Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire.  One of the books might be salvageable (I doubt it, though, since it stinks), but the other two are lost, soaked practically to the binding with rancid jam.  See for yourself: And before anyone thinks my mother did not protect the jars well enough, let me show you my trashcan, which is full of all the bubble wrap I took out before taking the picture above: USPS didn’t bang the box up a “little bit.”  They crushed it under something heavy or tossed it around.  When you look at the image from the inside of the box, you can see all the stress marks from the pressure put on it from above.  The level of beating this box took far surpasses anything resembling “normal shipping wear.” Oh, but it gets better.  When I called USPS to complain, they asked if I had insurance on the box and told me I was out of luck if I didn’t.  That’s right.  I have to pay them extra money in order to be assured the box won’t get crushed or mangled on its trip.  That’s like paying a restaurant for the assurance that someone won’t piss or spit in your soup.  You expect that there won’t be piss or spit in your soup.  That’s a minimum requirement of restaurant food.  When I send something through the post office, I expect that my box won’t be crushed if I clearly mark it as “fragile” with my own pen (as my mother did) and the post office red mark (which they also did a number of times on this particular package).  You buy insurance when you are worried about losing the box or that routine wear, even for fragile packages, might break the item.  You don’t buy insurance in order to remind USPS that they need to do their job. In the end, I’m furious.  I haven’t been this mad in almost a decade.  I’ve been looking forward to reading those books for weeks.  Now I have the pleasure of telling my mother that her lovely gift got shat on by USPS and that I’ll have to find replacements for the books she spent her day getting for me and the jam she slaved over her stove to make. Screw you, USPS.  I’d say I hope the government cuts your funding, but that would be mean… P.S.:  I’m writing this post at a time when I’ve cooled off enough not to curse a dozen times in a row.  I was so mad earlier that when I called my mother to figure out if she had insurance on the package, I actually cursed on her answering machine, which will not amuse her in the slightest… P.S.S.: Thanks to Yona for reminding me of this hilarious scene from Spaceballs: