I saw this on Yahoo! and felt that I wanted to comment. The headline was: “Activists to boycott Harrison Ford’s new film.”
This is a misleading headline because it makes the uninformed reader think that for some reason activists are taking issue with Harrison Ford and therefore boycotting his films. Which is incorrect. The “activists” or “sane people who read” are actually boycotting Orson Scott Card, the author whose book Ender’s Game has been adapted for screen, featuring Harrison Ford. Harrison Ford did not direct, produce, or write this film.
And what has Orson Scott Card done to deserve this?
He’s a bit of an outspoken supporter of marriage inequality. (Forgive me for not using a name they would use to describe themselves; however I feel that a person who actively works against equality is supporting inequality). To the end that he has said that should marriage equality become law of the land, he would violently work against that government in revolution:
How long before married people answer the dictators thus: Regardless of law, 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, so it can be replaced with a government that will respect and support marriage, and help me raise my children in a society where they will expect to marry in their turn.
Also, he thinks that (many) gays are made from molestation, rape or abuse. There is I fear a fantasy world where like a zombie outbreak, homosexuals go around raping all the young men until the human species fails and chimps take over because human males find vaginas disgusting. Of course this is nonsense; the newly minted homosexual population could still produce offspring via in vitro insemination and the chimps would not need to (planet of the apes). Of course if one did believe that, then perhaps one would work valiantly to try and reduce acts of violence upon children.
Instead, he’s on the board for the National Organization for Marriage. Which would be great if they actually tried to make things better for marriages. As I understand it, the marriage industrial complex can make things very expensive and difficult for underfunded young people who are seeing to establish a permanent bond blah blah blah. In my perfect world, an organization named in such a fashion would offer relationship and debt counseling for these people and would have suggestions for grooms who are generally clueless about things and not try to pretend that somehow men kissing men on top of cakes is the end of the world.
I support same sex marriage. I don’t know if I previously mentioned that.
OSC responded to the announced boycott with an exclusive statement released by Entertainment Weekly: (I subscribe, but apparently the new issue isn’t out yet)
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.
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.
Orson Scott Card
This statement does not include any apologies or even acknowledgement about why people would boycott him or the film. People aren’t willing to boycott the movie because it’s a film about or against gay marriage (last time I checked, none of the characters get married). He does not say that he accepts that the future includes gay marriage or that he is okay with that. From what I’ve read of the other things he has written on the issue, you could take the second paragraph and then add on “therefore we must arm ourselves to destroy this evil government” and that would work just fine.
…as far as the last bit regarding tolerance, I think the supporters of marriage equality show a lot of tolerance by not trying to pass laws saying that your marriage is illegal or inferior or that sexual acts you perform are illegal. By your standards that is great tolerance. You’re welcome.
I haven’t decided if I’m going to see this film. I really enjoyed the book. I just realized that I started this post because of a misleading headline and to which I think it’s important that we talk about the issues, and not try to inform people based off of periphery celebrities to try and trap readers into reading things they wouldn’t have normally clicked on. Linkbait.