Transcript:
I recently heard about the Skip Ender’s Game pledge. I’m all for supporting gay marriage and the LGBT community. My best friends and at least one of my family members are gay or transgendered. I personally haven’t figured out what I am, but I wouldn’t have anyone punish me for whatever I decide. But something didn’t sit right with me about this pledge.
It seems to me that this movement is boiling down thousands of hours of work into the hateful personal opinion of one man, an opinion that has nothing to do with Ender’s Game. Pledgers aren’t just hurting Orson Scott Card. They’re also hurting Harrison Ford, this kind-eyed child, and the hundreds of other people who made this movie possible. These people didn’t sign up to make a political film that would support anti-gay activism. They just wanted to make a movie based a good book… and money.
By making this campaign, Geeks Out suggests that Orson Scott Card is so horrible we shouldn’t give him any money even if it means hurting innocent people in the process. Anti-LGBT perspectives are very interesting to me. They give me an idea of who these people are, what they believe and why, and what they may know that I don’t. So I decided to look into Geeks Out’s claim that Card is a monster.
Card’s view was particularly interesting in that he didn’t rave about God and that it was based around the sad knowledge that humans exist only to breed. Basically, he believes that because everyone should want to pass on their genes and have their children pass on their genes, all of society should be dedicated to encouraging and supporting people to do just that. As much as they may want to, homosexual couples can’t have children of their own, so that behavior shouldn’t be encouraged for the survival of the human race.
This is a pretty legitimate argument in comparison to the usual argument, God hates gays, or the conspiracy theorists’ argument, the government is making us gay to reduce the population. Card lost me, however, when he started ranting about “The Left,” an unspecified group of people that he made sound as infamous as Alex Jones’ “Bilderberg Group.” It also didn’t help that he writes about how heterosexuals will be the ones discriminated against in the future… Oh my god…
I could spend hours debating Card’s arguments, but the point is that I don’t think this article, or any that I’ve read of his so far, establishes Orson Scott Card as evil. I don’t know if it even establishes him as a homophobe. I think he’s genuinely concerned about the survival of the human race and the welfare of children in a new age where behavior that doesn’t seem to be conducive to survival is acceptable. How will children develop with two parents of the same sex? Will they choose to have children of their own? How will humans and society evolve in the coming generations? Will we survive? These are kind of scary questions, ones that scare a lot of people and ones that I don’t think have been answered definitively. Card is only doing what he thinks is right, and that’s hardly worth punishing hundreds of unrelated people for.
If you think Card’s fears sound stupid, think of your own daily anxieties, what they’ve driven you to do, and how dumb they may sound to someone else. I like to think that humans aren’t stupid enough to die off without constant reminders of how to have productive sex… but I could be wrong.
So if you’re not going to see Ender’s Game in November, do it for a better reason than “because Orson Scott Card is anti-gay.” Don’t see it because you love Ender’s Game. Don’t see it because you’re still shocked by how horrible Man of Steel was. Or don’t see it because you’re too damn lazy. Or do see it! See it because you love Ender’s Game. Or because you believe this child is the next Keanu Reeves. Or because you have nothing better to do.
I give you permission. Either way, you aren’t supporting or denying the gay or anti-gay communities. Now go! Watch a stupid movie! Any movie! Talk at you next time!
Sources:
http://www.ornery.org/essays/warwatch/2004-02-15-1.html
http://www.deseretnews.com/article/700245157/State-job-is-not-to-redefine-marriage.html