bobbyfiend·11 mo. ago·edited 6 mo. ago]
As a former Mormon and multi-decade fan of his work, I think I understand it. He’s followed a trajectory I saw the rest of the church follow from the early 90s to the present day. There has always been a struggle between (more or less) “left” and “right” in the LDS church, as two alternative cultural directions. Actually, true “left” has been a very small group since maybe the mid 19th century, so the struggle is really between “moderates” and “hard-liners.”
The church itself uses its significant (i.e., kind of crushing) authoritarian power to discourage any discussion of this divide or gradient; the church desperately wants to be seen as monolithic and united by any outside observers, so even members are usually reluctant to observe any differences, especially in leaders. Nevertheless, there have been the hard-liners, like Spencer W. Kimball, president of the church during the 70s and most of the 80s, and then the moderates, like Gordon B. Hinckley, president during most of the 90s. As with any organization, the head is not the whole thing, so there have always been members of the Apostles and lower-ranking leaders further center or right on the continuum (all men, of course; there are some female “leaders” with no serious administrative power, and they have their subtle political tells, too, but this matters very little to most members). And always there are the members, dominated by those in the US (and they are dominated by those in Utah, Arizona, Idaho, Nevada, and California), who reflect and push these political currents, though they’re never, ever supposed to notice and especially not talk about that.
The church doesn’t have anything like the Catholic Catechism; there is no canonical repository of its beliefs and doctrine. If you ask, you’ll be referred to the 13 Articles of Faith, which leave out a great many key issues, or to the scriptures, which are open to a wide range of interpretation and are, canonically, subordinate to whatever the presidency said this week, anyway. So members believe all kinds of things while pretending to believe all the same things. Go to almost any LDS church in the USA on any given Sunday and, in a Sunday School class, start a conversation about evolution and listen to the apparently reasonable-sounding things that get said for the next half hour, while the sound of grinding teeth and quiet harumphing threatens to drown them out.
My perception is that the church as a whole, averaging across the members and the leaders, moved kind of more center during the 90s, then back to the right as the 21st century arrived. Prominent, public members like OSC, even if they weren’t specifically in church-level leadership positions, were (from conversations I had with many people during that time) under increasing pressure to toe the line and, if not vocally supporting the more hard-line statements coming from the leadership, at least take great care not to seem to contradict them. There has been a good deal of writing in the weird and interesting world of fringe-level Mormon writers and people like sociologists studying Mormons about the flurries of excommunications of prominent figures, especially anyone criticizing church actions, since the late 90s (though it happened earlier, too, of course). The LDS church had (and has) a lot of Martin Luthers nailing treatises to doors, metaphorically speaking–citing scriptures, past leaders’ statements, etc., to try to nudge the church further left, or arrest its slide to the right. Many of them are now no longer members, one way or the other.
The result of this is that almost any prominent, public LDS figure now, I think, either pretty strongly supports the church’s more right-wing, anti-gay, nationalist, etc. positions, or else they’re no longer members of the church. There are exceptions, but the more public your criticism, and the bigger your audience, the more likely the church is to pressure you to conform or get out.
Orson Scott Card conformed at every opportunity, taking him from the somewhat edgy LDS insider willing to write things that made Good Mormons blush and think deeply to something like a propagandist for the church’s unspoken agenda, speaking the worst of it out loud at every opportunity. Cognitive dissonance is a bitch.
Edit : Another commenter has pointed out some things that don’t fit my theory about OSC’s behavior/attitude change, and they’re good observations. They need consideration. Whether or not my perceived broad-trend arc in church hardlininess is accurate, it seems possible that Card’s shift could be more complexly motivated. I should think about this.
Edit July 2021: As of a few weeks ago, another semi-prominent Mormon has been excommunicated for her criticism of the church’s leadership. Natasha Helfer (Parker) is a sex therapist, sex blogger, etc. (and sometime personal acquaintance) who has been outspoken about the destructive consequences of the church’s sex-negative culture and its anti-LGBTQ policies. She was excommunicated for this, and for refusing to walk her statements back.
