The author Orson Scott Card has been a public bigot since around
1990. A devote Mormon, he just doesn’t
like homosexuals. While some writers
might not want to alienate any part of their audience and thus keep this to
themselves, Card has kept his proclivities out of the closet. He’s actually been on the board of the board
for anti-gay lobby The National Organization for Marriage since 2009.
There is something admirable in being honest with the
public. This is who I am, take it or
leave it, even if who I am is a person ruthlessly opposed to you being who you
are. Whatever. Card is not an ironic writer.
But now is novel Ender’s Game is a big movie, and offending
55-percent of your audience seems like a poor marketing choice. Card can’t take back 23 years of active
anti-gay activity, so he released this statement:
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.
It’s a taunt and it ticks me off way more than the bigotry that
birthed it. Card doesn’t want people to
boycott his movie because of his beliefs.
He’s asking for the kind of tolerance he has worked very hard to make
illegal. He poses opposition to the gay
rights and the Defense of Marriage act as a disagreement, like this a matter of
taste, as in - Ender’s Game is a masterpiece vs. Ender’s Game is a derivative
and spotty.
Equality is not a matter of opinion and he knows it, which is why
he has vociferously fought against it.
There are not two sides to every card.
When someone takes something from you and breaks it because it makes
them uncomfortable, there is very little reason to consider their side. I loved Ender, back in the 80s (haven’t read
it in a while) and always thought it could make a decent film, but Charlton
Heston emptied my bin of disassociation years ago. Have to see if it refilled, like an icemaker,
over time.
