Monday, July 15, 2013

Ender's Game movie boycott: GeeksOUT unpersuaded by Lionsgate LGBT benefit ploy; won't end protest

Also:
  • I09 wonders if the Ender's Game boycott could actually sink the $110 million movie
  • GeeksOUT interviewed on boycott by Michealangelo Signorile on his Sirius radio program
  • Donna Minkowitz: My favorite author, my worst interview. I worshipped militaristic Mormon science-fiction writer Orson Scott Card -- until we met.
Here's their pledge; below is their response to Lionsgate's cynical attempt to buy them off cheaply with an LGBT benefit.
     As proud members of the LGBT community, champions of creative freedom and honest self-expression, and a group at whom the film Ender’s Game is directly marketed, we appreciate Lionsgate’s record of doing good things and its admirable, strongly worded rejection of Ender’s Game author Orson Scott Card’s and the National Organization for Marriage’s anti-gay activism.
The simple fact is that Skip Ender’s Game has never been about the content of the novel or the film Ender’s Game.
     It’s about money. It’s about the money the company has already paid to Card and the potential millions he and the National Organization for Marriage stand to make off of the success of the film—our money.
     A benefit premiere, indeed any outreach to the LGBT community by Lionsgate, ought to be much appreciated. What’s clear is that whether or not they support his views, Lionsgate is standing by their man and their would-be blockbuster. They made the common, perhaps cynical, calculation that audiences wouldn’t connect Ender’s Game with Card’s very public homophobia—or wouldn’t care.
     Geeks OUT appreciates that most American families work for every dollar and care deeply about where that money goes and what it supports.
     Skip Ender's Game is not a threat; it is a reality. Our pledge adds hundreds of signatures every day from sci-fi fans around the world who would rather stay home than support homophobia. We have only just started and Geeks OUT and its allies are prepared to carry on past November 1. Nothing Card nor Lionsgate has said changes the fact that skipping Ender's Game is the easiest way to ensure none of your dollars go to Orson Scott Card's and the National Organization for Marriage's extreme anti-gay agenda.
GeeksOUT has collected several of Orson Scott Card's more inflammatory attacks on gay people. Here's one:
“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.”
— Orson Scott Card, “The Hypocrites of Homosexuality,” Sunstone Magazine, Feb 1990

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