NEWS

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.