From NPR today:
"The Ender's Game author and anti-gay activist Orson Scott Card responded to boycotts threats against the upcoming film adaptation starring Harrison Ford. The <gay> geek group Geeks OUT is organizing boycotts and "Skip Ender's Game" events in several U.S. cities because of Card's views on homosexuality. He wrote in 2008 that "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." Card responded to the backlash in a statement to Entertainment Weekly: "With the recent Supreme Court ruling, the gay marriage issue becomes moot. ... 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."

So let me get this straight, because you know, we exmos really can't reason very well -- he can threaten to bring down the government, but then demands tolerance toward himself? Just another Motool.
Blech.
Celeste

Ugh, I know! I was going to post this here.

The victim mentality that he has is aggravating.

The whole quote was just full of sour grapes and passive aggression. Basically, he's just stated, "Well, we lost, Gay marriage will go forward, now feel bad for me even though I had absolutely no sympathy or tolerance for you, please give me money by watching the movie so the rights to the sequel will be bought too."

If, in the past he had just been opposed to Gay Marriage, that might be one thing... But the vehemence of his opposition (act to take down the government that supports gay marriage? really?!?) and sitting on the NOM board is inexcusable and he won't get any of my money. Heck, if he stepped down from the board and said, "Look, I know I've been pretty vocal in the past, and I've done some serious soul searching and have come to realize that I was wrong" I might be willing to see the movie... But this statement shows that he's not apologetic at all and feels that he's the victim.

So, I will not be seeing Enders Game. I feel bad for the producers and actors in the movie. If OCS hadn't been such a bigot, then they might have had a pretty popular franchise on their hands. And who knows, it may make money due to the people who don't know about OCS's involvement, they are certainly trying to down play him as much as possible in the advertising. But, I think, with the recent Superman Comic debacle, enough of the target audience knows what's going on.

1. I personally believe that Orson Scott Card is no longer relevant.

2. When TSCC or its followers talk about "tolerance," it inevitably turns into a joke and a reflection of how much they love playing the "double standard" card.

A) Has a movie coming out and is the focus of a lot of controversy.

B) Not relevant.

Pick one, you can't have both. I'll give you a hint though, the correct answer is A.

The guy is a dinosaur. He hasn't been relevant since the 90's and his best work was in the 80's. It is too bad really, Ender's Game remains to this day one of my favorite reads.

Damn Hollywood libruls!

That's why the movie was made. I'm just surprised it took some producers so long. I'm surprised that it wasn't made in the late 80s, early 90s.

In the forward to a copy of Ender's Game he talks about how for 20 years Hollywood has been trying to make the movie into a teen romance and he hasn't budged.

Card's budget must have made him budge.

I got my four boys hooked on reading with Ender's Game.

I read part of it and then handed it to them and said, "It's all you now." Every one of them found it irresistible.

I plan to go as a nostalgia trip with my two youngest sons.


Anagrammy

PS. IMO Card's previous sequels suffered from lack of inspiration and only a brushing acquaintance with reality. He didn't even realize why people read Ender's Game. He went straight from a classic genius-kids story to hegemony and wondered why he had to double back and cannibalize his only good book for a new POV. He's a mess.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/10/2013 11:55PM by anagrammy.

Card is only doing what others LDS apologists have done.

“Since the Supreme Court has ruled against my bigotry, all my previous homophobic rants become moot”

McConkie did the same thing with Blacks and the Priesthood in 1978.

“Ignore every racist thing I ever said about blacks. The modern prophet has trumped me due to social pressures”.

These are my made up quotes but you get the gist.

Never mind.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/10/2013 05:07PM by crom.

Talented bigot is asking for tolerance. Please pretend I never wrote that "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."

BTW is he still trying to bring it down? They should add it to the temple recommend questions, "Have you actively tried to destroy the government since your last worthiness interview?"

When I first read that I thought, "Would be like, at the end or WWII, a Nazi saying, now that the war is over, the final solution is moot. It will be interesting to see if the Jews show the Nazis tolerance."

Then I thought, wow, that is really over the top. Then again, it isn't really.

Given his "...any government that attempts to change it is my mortal enemy. I will act to destroy that government and bring it down." quote, I don't think your comparison is over the top at all.

I was going to say that it's a good thing that he doesn't have any real power, but NOM did plenty of harm and is still working on doing harm... At least the tides are finally starting to turn.

I put his books down years ago over the raw tangy flavor of victimhood running through his stories. Apparently that is his favorite way of dealing with a world that does not always agree with him.

From "I will destroy this country" to "what if people are mean to me" illustrates his fear that he might have to taste just a little bit of the nasty medicine he has tried to dish out to the LGBT community.

What do you think of another of his comments:

"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."

What a liar. What a sniveling self-excuser.

To threaten to destroy the government and take it down, puts Card into the grouping of narcissistic megalomaniacs--those little Napoleons in mental hospitals, who think they have the power to overthrow a government. How arrogant. Yes, there's freedom of speech in America--but how do idiots get away with making loud public statements like that? (Maybe the IRS will audit him, or something.) I guess Americans are too peace-loving to beat him up in a dark alley. No wonder Card avoids large crowds right now. Can you imagine the reception he would get if he were to show up at the Comic-con festival?

I don't mind boycotting, on a personal level. Even though this creep's work is popular, I'm not interested in what a bigot can write. I will listen to Wagner's music, though. and enjoy looking at good art, even though the painter or sculptor is crazy. Beauty is beauty. But ideas--that is a whole different matter.

The issue of gay marriage did indeed exist in the 80's. Only at the time the anti-gay marriage folk had the advantage and showed none of the tolerance toward the loosing side that he seems to expect in defeat.

Card's only really good book was Ender's Game. And it shouldn't be a movie, it should be a limited miniseries on AMC/Showtime/HBO etc.

I think Card and a whole bunch of other Mormon creative types, suffer, because they can't explore the world the way they would like to. You're right about Ender's Game being his best work. Notice it was about children. Basically it's Hogwarts in space. Card could explore a lot of issues that face children, but because it was a children's book, he didn't have to cross that imaginary no go line that Mormons simply can not cross.

Throughout my TBM career I tried other Card books from time to time, but all of his books suffered from having the same basic plot where they basically have some big problem, they come up with a solution for it about halfway to 2/3rds through and then they execute that plan flawlessly through the rest of the book. Much like many of Ender's strategies, that could only work once...

I disagree so hard. Card wrote many great books. He also wrote a lot of crap, but Ender's Game was not his only success by far.

Speaker For the Dead, even as a non Mormon, defined how I view death and funerals. The shadow series was fun up until the last couple of books. Hell, even some stories in the Worthing Saga make me cry every single time.

Boycott this homophobe

Go to a multiplex

Buy a ticket to ANY movie other than Enders Game

Go see Enders Game

Tell your friends to do the same

My plan was just to pirate it later. I like your plan better.

Do you still wonder if the movie, "The Sixth Sense" was ripped off from Card's book- "Lost Boys"? I sit around a lot and wonder about that. He is a piece of work and needs to calm down. Let gay people be gay -- who cares ~ not me, un-natural- yes, but it's something I will never understand, so I don't care

What is natural? Lots of other species "in nature" exhibit homosexual behaviors.

Why do you call being gay unnatural?

Nature is full of examples (penguins come to mind, but there are many others - and male dogs will "do" anything - legs, furniture, other male dogs...

(sorry if this duplicates the post above, but you posted while I was writing Ballzac - love that name BTW).

Tom in Paris



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/11/2013 09:50AM by Soft Machine.

I am not into girls and am a girl so I find it unnatural to me, that would just gross me right out, I would rather be by myself 100 percent - that's my opinion - I don't look at someone and see their sexuality, I see the person they are- an individual. It's a nonissue to me and something I will probably never understand..in this lifetime - other animals may just be horny but that is inconclusive cause they can't talk. I have gay people in my family and I am like really.. that's weird, cause I thought you were straight 4 sure -- head spun. Be gay, no one cares- or be lesbian. You have to deal with the unnaturalness

He's just a big crybaby drama queen. Regardless, I will probably read Ender's Game soon since so many people have given it high props.

I didn't like Speaker for the Dead. I haven't read his stuff since then.

Something about all the atrocities young Ender committed that were somehow never his fault just rubbed me the wrong way. Plus, the family dynamics made me cringe. (Possibly because they had too many similarities to my own childhood family dynamics.)

Of course, I was in elementary school when I read them.