>>22090372
That's a damned good question. Short answer, I don't know.
I tend to excuse his issues as good faith ignorance, and I do sincerely believe he'd have handled things differently with more information available to him, and that Uncle Vlad was not so much homosexual as decadent, revelling more in the pleasure of violating taboo and exercising power over the vulnerable, but that's at least fifty percent cope on my part. However, it is in Leto's voice that we read Herbert's bizarre and uninformed opinion on why gay men are bad but lesbians are hot and just going through a phase, and while Leto had more raw data to process than any human could, he lacked context, being not only virginal but prepubescent, a true Puer Eternal, embodying The Fool for all his seeming sophistication.
But I think it's simpler than that. Card made statements in his narrative, and Herbert asked questions in his inner monologues. Card spewed hate to appease the leaders of his cult, while Herbert offered up polished musings on a topic he knew was important and genuinely wanted to understand. There's a dismissiveness, a curt closing-off of any validity to dissent, in Card's just -so style of saying all villains are gays and all gays are villains and that everybody exists to pay tithes and producer tithe-paying producers of tithe-paying producers of.... etc etc etc. Meanwhile Herbert shared his thoughts in earnest, in a way that didn't seem immediately hostile to discussion and argument. I'm afraid the LDS will send the IRS for me if I criticize Card's shitty fantasy novels, but if Herbert hadn't died mere months after my birth, I'm positive I could have had a conversation with him on this, asked him for clarification, offered up my own thoughts, experiences, and opinions, and that he'd have heard me out, even if he didn't change his mind, and that if he were writing today, he'd exercise care not to accidentally provide justification for pointless violence against marginalised groups whose worst sin is that they've voluntarily removed themselves from the gene pool. Once again, I'm probably projecting, but that's my take on the subject.
TL;DR Card punches down, Herbert punched up, nobody likes a bully, and everyone loves an underdog
P.S. Thank you for your question. Even if we disagree on a topic, a good-faith effort to understand the opposition speaks well of an individual's character, and indicates the possibility of peaceful and mutually satisfactory resolution of conflict.