Worse, without God’s guidance (through a properly appointed representative, of course) we might listen to the devil’s rock music, play evil role playing games, have healthy shame-free views on sexuality, dance, and not vote properly — all those areas where God has given each of the various Churches clear (if wildly differing) direction and authority over.

It is unfortunate that Obama won the presidency. I heard Palin might have attempted to institute an Atheist Registration law similar to the sex offender registration laws. The police would have had monthly meetings at local elementary schools to warn parents when an atheist has moved into the neighborhood.

Hoo-boy, I knew atheism wasn’t precisely mainstream in the US, but it’s good to know that I (and, oh, a good several hundred sf/f writers, at the very least) am roughly on the same moral plane as those who rape children.

As you touch on, the difficulty with taboos are that they tend to be largely rooted in culture and in time. What is taboo today may be acceptable tomorrow. What is taboo in China may be A-okay in France or Japan and vice versa.

Also, “taboo” can also mean something that is considered “morally” inappropriate, such as homosexuality or most pages of the karma sutra in sexually repressed cultures for example, which are not actually harmful but can be exciting and titillating for some readers.

The real line, in my opinion, should always be drawn at whether something is consistently physically or emotionally harmful, whether it occurs in Victorian era England or modern Las Vegas.

Also, sometimes the author is consciously aware they are putting in something controversial, other times, they are simply not aware of their own racist or sexist or “taboo” viewpoint. Not to say that excuses it, but the two must be evaluated differently – one may have a deliberate intended purpose beyond simply entertaining, the other generally does not.

And there is the problem that you can’t please everyone all the time. If I went looking, I could support arguments of racist or sexist or “inappropriate” content in any book, from Curious George to George Orwell to George RR Martin. Pullman’s implicit criticism of organized religion is no more “taboo” (and much more interesting) to me than C.S. Lewis’ or L. Ron Hubbard’s religious allegories and proselytizing.

Heck, there’s a ton of racism, sexism, slavery, incest, genocide, child beating, intolerance, homophobia and more in the Bible. At least Stranger in a Strange Land, for all its messianic fabling, its attempts at moralizing and its “pervy” views hasn’t caused generations of war and torture and oppression. Because specfic is just that — fiction. Even the books that have a moral to the story aren’t meant to be literally taken as a template for how one should live personally.

Further, our world is filled with pedophiles, chauvinists, racists, and a-holes (lepers and otherwise). So to include them in a story only makes the story reflect reality, a reality we can’t simply ignore.

None of which is to say that stories should cast such physically or emotionally harmful behaviors in a positive light if such behaviors ARE included. Ideally, through discussions such as this, authors will remain conscious of the way the behaviors of their characters may be perceived as they are writing them.

And of course authors should try to include such behaviors sparingly and only as supporting evidence of a character’s flawed or evil nature, or to demonstrate how such negative behaviors get passed on to new generations, and perhaps even demonstrate the character’s cognitive shift to seeing such behaviors as “wrong” and growing beyond them to enjoy healthier behaviors. Unless you are writing historical fiction about Caligula or something, I suppose.

Man. That was quite a ramble. Can you tell I’m procrastinating about doing real work?