If you are a fan of science fiction, you have likely heard of Orson Scott Card. Card is the author of Ender's Game and a lot of follow ups to it, as well as a gazillion other books and stories. Card is also a right wing homophobic, climate change denier. Wikipedia adds,
Card has also said that opposition to intelligent design is based on scientific dogma rather than a substantive assessment of the evidence. He also stated he believed the intelligent design movement will never be supported by genuine scientific evidence.
Card's immersion in the LDS faith has been an important facet of his life from early on. His great-great-grandfather was Brigham Young, an important leader in the Latter Day Saint movement, and all of Card's ancestors from at least three generations have been members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church). His ancestors include several other figures notable in the LDS Church, including the Cardston colony founder Charles Ora Card. As such, his faith has been a source of inspiration and influence for both his writing and his personal views.
You get the picture.
In November, an all-star film production of Ender’s Game is hitting theaters. Millions will rush off to see it and help to finance this creep.
Salon writing on Card's homophobia points out:
In 2008, Card lamented that he had for so long been labeled a “homophobe” because of his stated positions on homosexuality. Here’s a run-down on what he said. Notably, he’s become far more vocal and politically active in the fight against gay marriage in recent years.
1990: Card argued that states should keep sodomy laws on the books in order to punish unruly gays–presumably implying that the fear of breaking the law ought to keep most gay men in the closet where they belonged.
2004: He claimed that most homosexuals are the self-loathing victims of child abuse, who became gay “through a disturbing seduction or rape or molestation or abuse.”
2008: In 2008, Card published his most controversial anti-gay screed yet, in the Mormon Times, where he argued that gay marriage “marks the end of democracy in America,” that homosexuality was a “tragic genetic mixup,” and that allowing courts to redefine marriage was a slippery slope towards total homosexual political rule and the classifying of anyone who disagreed as “mentally ill:”
Card went on to advocate for, literally, a straight people’s insurrection against a pro-gay government:
[W]hen government is the enemy of marriage, then the people who are actually creating successful marriages have no choice but to change governments, by whatever means is made possible or necessary… Regardless of law, marriage has only one definition, and any government that attempts to change it is my mortal enemy. I will act to destroy that government and bring it down….
2009: He joined the board for anti-gay lobby The National Organization for Marriage, which was created to pass California’s notorious Proposition 8, banning gay marriage.
2012: He supported his home state North Carolina’s constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage by arguingthat gay marriage “will be the bludgeon [The Left] use to make sure that it becomes illegal to teach traditional values in the schools.”
I suggest you skip the movie.
Orson, though, says you should be tolerant of his intolerance and not join in any boycott of his movies or his books. His supporters also claim that a boycott will hurt innocent workers. Raw Story says this is:
...an argument that seemingly ignores the fact that production crews are paid while the movie is being made, which is not impacted by how it performs at the box office.
What do I think?
I'm down with the comment I found on Joe.My. God. blog,
Yes, folks, the man who swore to "destroy the government and bring it down" over gay marriage and who declared himself to be your "mortal enemy" now wants YOU to be all noble and forgiving and shit. FUCK THAT.
It is time we quit pretending that we can all live in little cubbyholes, that some can be bigots sometimes but not at other times, that somehow being a bigoted, intolerant,fool is a protected status. It's time we make bigoted, intolerant, fools an endangered species instead. It's time we realize that some guy who writes books and includes in his books his thoughts and his hate and by which overtly or subtly readers are influenced by such...by movies...by TV.
I'm not calling for censorship of the arts, although, well, I won't go there right now. However, we have the right and the obligation in fact to educate, organize, take action to expose and to fight back against those like Orson Scott Card who enjoy the money in their wallets, that millions of unsuspecting "fans" put there, while hiding behind their supposed "intellectual" freedoms. For some reason, the Scott Cards of the world always think it is okay to oppress others, but we have no right to fight back.
The following is from GeeksOut.
GEEKS OUT RESPONDS TO ORSON SCOTT CARD, STILL PLANS TO SKIP ENDER'S GAME
The Bill of Rights protects your freedom of speech but it does not protect your right to a blockbuster opening weekend.
NOM Board Member and Ender’s Game author Orson Scott Card’s tone-deaf plea for “tolerance” from pro-gay marriage forces, first given to Entertainment Weekly, struck such a sour note with so manybecause it seems to miss the point entirely.
This is not and has never been about a much beloved sci-fi novel. Leaving aside the fact that Card thinks gay civil rights didn’t exist in the mid-80s, which is pretty insulting to the post-Stonewall generation frontline against a little something called AIDS—this is about us, here and now. This is about our community refusing to financially support an extreme anti-gay activist. We didn’t read his diary, and we’re not taking dinner table conversation out of context—Orson Scott Card has a very public record of far-right comments against marriage equality as a concept and LGBT folk as human beings, such as:
“But homosexual "marriage" is an act of intolerance. It is an attempt to eliminate any special preference for marriage in society—to erase the protected status of marriage in the constant balancing act between civilization and individual reproduction.
So if my friends insist on calling what they do "marriage," they are not turning their relationship into what my wife and I have created, because no court has the power to change what their relationship actually is.
Instead they are attempting to strike a death blow against the well-earned protected status of our, and every other, real marriage.
They steal from me what I treasure most, and gain for themselves nothing at all. They won't be married. They'll just be playing dress-up in their parents’ clothes.
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.”
—Orson Scott Card, “Homosexual ‘Marriage’ and Civilization,” 2004
Tell families in 37 states where gay marriage is still illegal that it’s a “moot issue.” Tell citizens in Indiana, where it’s now a criminal act for same-sex couples even to apply for a marriage license. Tell that to the Virginians whose governor wants to recriminalize sodomy. I doubt very much children delegitimized and stigmatized by red-state legislatures across the country are kickin’ back with a cold drink to let historical inevitability do the work now that the Supreme Court has ruled on DOMA. That’s a bizarrely dismissive and defeatist attitude from the same man who swore,
“W]hen government is the enemy of marriage, then the people who are actually creating successful marriages have no choice but to change governments, by whatever means is made possible or necessary… Regardless of law, marriage has only one definition, and any government that attempts to change it is my mortal enemy. I will act to destroy that government and bring it down….”
—Orson Scott Card, The Mormon Times, 2008
Does this look "moot" to anyone?
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 ofEnder’s Game lunchboxes buy for NOM?
Now would be an ideal time to hear from Lionsgate, as we know them to be a company of open hearts and allies of LGBT families. Now would be a great time, too, to hear from the cast and creative team behind Ender’s Game who have no connection to the author’s anti-gay activities and who’ve been vocal supporters of gay rights in the past. How do you cut this guy a check?
No matter what happens with Skip Ender’s Game, American voters have already rejected Orson Scott Card's and NOM’s extreme anti-gay agenda. Whether they’ll continue to fund it at the box office remains to be seen.
—Geeks OUT
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