Geeks Out website calls for boycott of 'Ender's Game' movie
The website Geeks Out is asking the public to boycott the film version of author Orson Scott Card's sci-fi novel because of Card's stance against gay marriage.
'Ender's Game' is by writer Orson Scott Card.
The world still has yet to find out whether the film adaptation of author Orson Scott Card’s sci-fi classic “Ender’s Game” will do well at the box office, but we already know some people won’t be flocking to theaters.
The website Geeks Out, which according to its website “rallies, empowers and promotes the queer geek community,” is calling for a boycott of the film because of statements Card has made in the past against gay marriage. Geeks Out has established a website titled Skip Ender’s Game which asks, “Do you really want to give this guy your money?”
“However much you may have admired his books, keep your money out of Orson Scott Card’s pockets,” the site reads. It urges visitors to sign a pledge to not see the film, create a “Skip Ender’s Game” event for Nov. 1, the day the movie hits theaters, and tell friends about Card’s views.
Card recently issued a statement to Entertainment Weekly about the boycott.
“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,” he said. “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.”
Card’s views had come up before when DC Comics hired Card to write a story for “Adventures of Superman,” an anthology series, and a petition was started to replace the author. Chris Sprouse, who had been scheduled to illustrate the comic book, dropped out of the project, stating that “the media surrounding this story reached the point where it took away from the actual work.”
Card has written pieces that slam gay marriage, including one for the magazine Sunstone that was published in 1990 in which he discussed the place of gay marriage in the Church of Latter-Day Saints. (The author is reportedly a practicing Mormon.)
“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,” he wrote.
In 2008, he wrote a piece for the Deseret News in which he stated that “human beings are part of a long mammalian tradition of heterosexuality… That a few individuals suffer from tragic genetic mixups does not affect the differences between genetically distinct males and females.”