LGBTQ Life & Entertainment

'Ender's Game' Boycott Campaign Ratchets Up A Notch As Novelist Reacts

Orson Scott Card * file photo

By Brody Levesque | NEW YORK -- Anti-gay activist and sci-fi novelist Orson Scott Card, who sits on the board of directors of the anti-gay National Organisation For Marriage, (NOM) responded to plans for a boycott of the big-screen adaptation of his 1985 novel "Ender's Game Monday. The movie version is set to be released in theaters this November.

"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," Card wrote. 

"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."

Movie insiders have already begun distancing themselves from Card. “Orson's politics are not reflective of the moviemakers,” one person involved with the film told The Hollywood Reporter earlier this year. “We’re adapting a work, not a person. The work will stand on its own.”

The boycott had been called for last week by the New York based 'Geeks Out,' an advocacy group established in 2010 to promote visibility of LGBTQ/queer geeks. The group had released a statement on their website last week that read in part;

"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 pocket. 

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 organization adds, 

"The queer geek community will not subsidize his fear-mongering and religious bullying. We will not pay him to demean, insult, and oppress us."

Card, a resident of Greensboro, N.C. has long had an adversarial stance against the LGBT community on numerous issues, which has included labeling homosexuality a "deviant behavior" and saying "gay rights is a collective delusion."

In 2012 Card wrote about legalising same-sex marriage:

"[...] Legalizing gay marriage is not about making it possible for gay people to become couples.

It’s about giving the left the power to force anti-religious values on our children. Once they legalize gay marriage, it will be the bludgeon they use to make sure that it becomes illegal to teach traditional values in the schools."

LGBTQ Nation has reached out to LIONSGATE Entertainment, parent company of the movie company Summit releasing the film as well as NOM for comment on the planned boycott.