NEWS

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.