I haven't dug incredibly deeply into Card's political statements outside of his fiction, so unlike my other comments in this thread, I'm shooting from the hip h

I haven't dug incredibly deeply into Card's political statements outside of his fiction, so unlike my other comments in this thread, I'm shooting from the hip here, but... My read is that Card (like a few other Mormon SF writers I can think of) is: 1) seriously invested in religion, especially but not exclusively his own religion, and absolutely unwilling to simply dismiss it 2) genuinely interested in social justice 3) struggling to resolve this conflict This comes out strongly in questions about the tension between collective action and individualist conscience. And it's also pretty tightly-wound in the tension between churchly homophobia on the one hand, and on the other, compassion and empathy and respect for the sovereignty of the individual whenever possible. I suspect that when one says that Card "is [clearly] a far-right reactionary", you're likely to be oversimplifying to the point of uselessness. Indeed, I suspect that in general, that description is unlikely to tidily fit very many people in the world. But on the other hand, I believe it's useful and accurate to say "some of Card's beliefs seem consonant with a deep connection to a reactionary ideology".