Members of the LGBT community have launched an internet campaign to boycott the up-coming Harrison Ford movie, Ender’s Game. The author of the book in which the movie is based on, Orson Scott Card, is the target of this boycott due to his well-established anti-gay marriage views.
There are many examples of this readily available on the internet.
“Laws against homosexual behavior should remain on the books, not to be indiscriminately enforced against anyone who happens to be caught violating them, but to be used when necessary to send a clear message that those who flagrantly violate society’s regulation of sexual behavior cannot be permitted to remain as acceptable, equal citizens within that society.”
— Orson Scott Card, “The Hypocrites of Homosexuality,” Sunstone Magazine, Feb 1990
The following quote was taken from Card’s 2004 essay, titled “Civilization Watch: Homosexual “Marriage” and Civilization.”
“There is a myth that homosexuals are “born that way,” and we are pounded with this idea so thoroughly that many people think that somebody, somewhere, must have proved it . . . The dark secret of homosexual society—the one that dares not speak its name—is how many homosexuals first entered into that world through a disturbing seduction or rape or molestation or abuse, and how many of them yearn to get out of the homosexual community and live normally.”
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Any homosexual man who can persuade a woman to take him as her husband can avail himself of all the rights of husbandhood under the law. And, in fact, many homosexual men have done precisely that, without any legal prejudice at all.
Ditto with lesbian women. Many have married men and borne children. And while a fair number of such marriages in recent years have ended in divorce, there are many that have not.
So it is a flat lie to say that homosexuals are deprived of any civil right pertaining to marriage. To get those civil rights, all homosexuals have to do is find someone of the opposite sex willing to join them in marriage.
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Just because homosexual partners wish to be called “married” and wish to force everyone else around them to regard them as “married,” does not mean that their Humpty-Dumpty-ish wish should be granted at the expense of the common language, democratic process, and the facts of human social organization.”
Promo photo for Ender’s Game (Image courtesy of Facebook)
Among the groups reacting to these remarks is an organization called Geeks OUT, a queer geek advocacy group, which is running the “Skip Ender’s Game” campaign.
Skip Ender’s Game is asking people to take a stand against Card and his film.
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.”
Card released a statement regarding the controversy to Entertainment Weekly earlier this week.
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.
-Orson Scott Card
This ironic call for acceptance is of little comfort to his critics. The statement’s vague message doesn’t apologize for his views or address whether he still holds those opinions, an apparent confirmation by omission.
The real question now is whether Card becoming the Chick Fil-A of science fiction will effect the film’s box office sales.
Ender’s Game opens in theaters on November 1, 2013 and is scheduled to appear at San Diego Comic-Con 2013.