In the melee of voices over the last week talking about Geeks Out planned boycott of the Harrison Ford sci-fi flick Ender’s Game – due to the fact it’s based on a book by the homophobic Orson Scott Card – it would be easy to believe that everyone gay was behind the boycott, while everyone anti-gay was attacking it. But that’s certainly not true.

Now Dustin Lance Black, the Oscar-winning writer of Milk and a leading voice in the fight against Prop. 8, has stepped forward to say he thinks the boycott is misguided, although he’s since deleted his comments. In a Facebook post he wrote, “There’s so much good to be done right now. Boycotting a movie made by 99% LGBT equality folks in an LGBT equality industry is a waste of our collective energy,” Black wrote Saturday. “Making one phone call to a relative in the South who isn’t quite there yet would be 1,000 times more effective [than this boycott.”

The Guardian says that he had later added, “The homophobic novelist who wrote the book hasn’t been involved in decades. Misguided boycott.” He later deleted his posts, which may be due to Black not realising the extent of Card’s involvement in the fight against gay marriage.

Card has written several opinion pieces in the last couple of years that have decried gay marriage and been generally unpleasant about gay people. He also sat on the board of the National Organization For Marriage (although some reports say he left quietly a few months ago), one of the highest profile and most virulently nasty of the anti-same sex marriage groups.

It appears Black may not have realised that, hence his deleting the post (or it could be in reaction to those who didn’t take kindly to his views).

Misinformation from some sources in the last week has suggested Geeks Out were against the film because of things Card said in the 1990s. Admittedly he was worse then, calling for the re-criminalization of gay sex and linking being gay and paedophilia, but his involvement in homophobia certainly isn’t decades old. While his rhetoric has slightly calmed in the last few years (he no longer things being gay should be a criminal offence), he’s certainly still been giving plenty of time and effort to fighting against gay rights.

That said, Black is not the only gay person who’s been reticent about boycotting the movie, as even before the boycott was announced, others were already trying to reconcile their love of the story of Ender’s Game, with the fact it could potentially make Card a lot of money, which he could then channel into anti-gay causes. For example, some have been suggesting gay people watch the movie, but also donate some money to a cause such as The Trevor Project, to offset any money Card might make.

Since the boycott was announced, Card has asked for Tolerance, while the pro-LGBT company behind the movie, Lionsgate, has distanced itself from his views. However Geeks Out has rejected this.

Earlier this week, the gay group Geeks Out announced they are planning a boycott of the movie version of Ender’s Game due to the fact that it’s based on a novel by Orson Scott Card, who is very anti-gay and sits of the board of the virulently homophobic National Organization For Marriage.

The boycott led Card to respond, asking for tolerance and seemingly accepting he’d lost the gay marriage debate. He said, “Ender’s Game is set more than a century in the future and has nothing to do with political issues that did not exist when the book was written in 1984. With the recent Supreme Court ruling, the gay marriage issue becomes moot. The Full Faith and Credit clause of the Constitution will, sooner or later, give legal force in every state to any marriage contract recognized by any other state.

“Now it will be interesting to see whether the victorious proponents of gay marriage will show tolerance toward those who disagreed with them when the issue was still in dispute.”

However, many have been less than impressed with this plea, including Geeks Out themselves and gay sci-fi author, David Gerrold (who, among many other things, wrote the classic Star Trek episode, The Trouble With Tribbles).

Geeks Out responded by saying, ‘The Bill of Rights protects your freedom of speech but it does not protect your right to a blockbuster opening weekend…

‘This plea for tolerance is perhaps a bridge too far, especially from someone who characterized gay marriage as “the bludgeon [The Left] use to make sure that it becomes illegal to teach traditional values in the schools,” (2012). There’s nothing more democratic and tolerant than a consumer boycott, rooted in the ideas of free market accountability. Skip Ender’s Game is about doing what all of us do every day—use facts to determine who and what to support with our money.

‘Orson Scott Card, we can tolerate your anti-gay activism, your right-wing extremism, your campaign of fear-mongering and insults, but we’re not going to pay you for it. You’ve got the right to express your opinions and beliefs any way you choose—but you don’t have a right to our money. How many homophobic billboards and absurd “Gathering Storm” ads would a new fortune built off of Ender’s Game lunchboxes buy for NOM?’

Gerrold meanwhile wrote on his Facebook page, ‘After twenty years of despicably virulent homophobia, no. This is just another detestable characterization of LGBT people — that we are intolerant. Intolerant? Of people who want to lock us up, put us in concentration camps, deny us our civil rights? Intolerant? Are you fucking kidding me? You want me to be tolerant, Scott? First be one of those people who understands. Or to put it bluntly — get your fucking foot off my neck, then we’ll talk tolerance.

‘See, Scott — I don’t dislike you. I honestly don’t. I think you’re a very interesting author and you’ve turned out some works I admire. But you’ve made PR Mistake Number One. You’ve sided with hate-mongers. You’ve targeted a minority and you’ve characterized yourself as the righteous warrior. That gives you a short-term gain and a long-term loss. Look up Father Coughlin and Anita Bryant and Kirk Cameron.

‘Now you’ve made PR Mistake Number Two — instead of honestly and sincerely apologizing for the hurt you have caused others, you have doubled down. You have played the martyr card, arguing that you are the victim…

“Our nation was founded on the idea that ‘we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men (people) are created equal, endowed with certain inalienable rights — and that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.’ Your public statements, Orson Scott Card, put you on the wrong side of that declaration. Until you recognize that your public utterances have been at the service of bigotry and prejudice, there can be no redemption for you in the eyes of the LGBT community. Or anyone else, for that matter.”

You can find out more about the planned boycott at Skip Ender’s Game.