UPDATE: In the wake of the backlash of the call for a boycott of the Ender’s Game movie, Orson Scott Card has released the following statement regarding his views on the issue of gay rights and marriage:
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.
Considering how intense his original view on the government recognition of gay marriage has been in the past (again, he called for the overthrow of any said government), one has to wonder how intense the pressure was to make him change his stance. Either that or the potential paycheck is much bigger than he had originally thought.
ORIGINAL STORY:
The national LGBT group, Geeks OUT, is asking people to “Skip Ender’s Game” due to the virulently homophobic views of the book’s author, Orson Scott Card. Geeks OUT says,
Skip Ender’s Game is a call to action. Do NOT see this movie! Do not buy a ticket at the theater, do not purchase the DVD, do not watch it on-demand. Ignore all merchandise and toys. However much you may have admired his books, keep your money out of Orson Scott Card’s pockets … By pledging to Skip Ender’s Game, we can send a clear and serious message to Card and those that do business with his brand of anti-gay activism — whatever he’s selling, we’re not buying. The queer geek community will not subsidize his fear-mongering and religious bullying. We will not pay him to demean, insult, and oppress us.
Those words may seem a little harsh, but people need to keep in mind that OSC is not just an author who happens to dislike gay people. We’re talking about a man who sits on the board of the extremely homophobic National Organization for Marriage, who has gone on record stating that homosexuals are rapists and pedophiles, that they should be punished in a court of law (he went on later to say his words were taken out of context), and that any government that supports gay marriage needs to be destroyed. No, this is a far right nut — a fact not lost on Summit Entertainment who is putting out the film.
If you’re going to Comic Con this year and see the Ender’s Game panel or exhibit, you’ll notice that OSC is pointedly absent. One would think that having the author there would be important for the fans (just look at George R. R. Martin with Game of Thrones), so it’s rather telling that OSC was not invited to appear. It’s not far fetched to guess that Summit knew the reaction to his presence would be detrimental to the experience and told him to stay the hell away, so I’ll be very surprised if we see or hear anything out of him throughout the premiere and release of this movie — everyone knows he’s a liability.
The struggle for me is that Ender’s Game was one of the most important and formative books of my childhood and remains extremely influential to me even now as an adult; hell, I have an ‘Ender’ tattoo on my right arm! Thus, my desire to see a movie I’ve been waiting for almost my whole life is clashing like hell with the ideology of the idiotic and insane author who created it.
One thing people need to understand is that boycotts don’t work; they sound neat, get everyone riled up around a cause, but in the end, don’t really do much. Remember, there’s no such thing as bad publicity; the moment one person says they’re going to boycott something, it makes another person go out and see/buy whatever is being boycotted simply because they’re being told not to.
So I’m not going to boycott the movie. What I AM going to do, aside from seeing it at a press screening, is make a donation to a local LGBT charity to more than match every dollar I spend on the movie or blu ray (thanks to KMC1138 for the idea). This way, the people directly involved who worked hard on this project and deserve respect for their work (actors, director, etc) get their due while ensuring that the scales stay tipped on the side of equality and not this mad man. Is it a compromise? Yes, but it works out for everyone and is something that seems just to me.