One-sided Card

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.