On the Elizabeth Moon kerfuffle

Elizabeth Moon, an SF/Fantasy author whose books I’ve bought and read, wrote this Livejournal entry in which, among other things, she wrote a somewhat impolitic but also relatively thoughtful commentary on Muslim immigrants to the US, the (not really at) Ground Zero Mosque, assimilation, etc.

This led to a whole bunch of angry comments and discussion, which was subsequently deleted by Moon (but preserved here).

End result: she has been demoted from being one of the Guests of Honor at WisCon, the self-proclaimed “Leading Feminist Science Fiction Convention.”

Which has led to much wailing and gnashing of teeth and hurling of vitriol from various viewpoints on the subject (see the comments here).

My own two cents or so on the subject:

1. No, it’s not censorship for a private organization to disinvite Moon from being Guest of Honor.  And, yes, she can (if she chooses) attend and say whatever she wishes to say. Taking social heat (vs legal heat) for what one says is both legal and the price we pay for living in a society.
2. I don’t agree fully with some of what Moon says, some bits in particular. On the other hand, tarring it as Islamophobia, or bias against “brown people,” or hatred of “women of color”, is simply not supported by the post. She makes it clear, for example, that she is opposed to all religious domination of law and society, Christianist included. She’s hardly Bryan Fischer, in other words. This is carried through, in my opinion, into the (now-deleted) comments (most of which I’ve read from the copies referenced above).
3. Deleting a comment thread is rarely a useful or effective idea. Better to lock it and be done with it.
4. The “She hates all Muslims and should be banned from civilized society” crowd of commenters is as annoying and facile in their reading of her blog entry as the “She hates all Muslims and so should be crowned with many crowns” crowd. Both can be found in profusion in the comments.
5. WisCon has the right to remove her status as Guest of Honor.  In so doing, they should probably offer refunds to those folks who bought tickets on that basis.
6. If she’d remained Guest of Honor for her work, as a woman, in the field of SF/Fantasy, that would not IMO have implied an endorsement by the convention for comments she made on her LJ blog (esp. comments made after the invitation was extended). Part of that’s timing, part of that is what a GoH for a con actually means, and part of that is the whole idea of where one draws the line between a creator’s works and the creator him/herself.

In short, I think WisCon made a mistake, and reading Ms. Moon’s opinions hasn’t made me feel the need to go and toss out her books from our bookshelves.