Orson Scott Card makes a plea for homophobia tolerance

After a call for a boycott of the upcoming film Ender's Game, author Orson Scott Card has released a statement asking for tolerance.

Ender's Game author Orson Scott Card has a long history of homophobia. Over the years, he has written screed after screed railing against gay marriage. Here's just a selection: in 1990, he wrote an essay defending a Georgia law against sodomy, even in private. In 2004, he disingenuously argued that gay people have the legal right to marry, just not each other. In 2008, he published a long article arguing that homosexuality is a mental illness and a dysfunction, and that gay marriage would spell the end of democracy in the US. In 2012, he argued (incorrectly, at least in the US) that no laws remained that discriminated against gay people.

In response to this well-documented history, queer geek organisation Geeks Out called for a boycott of the upcoming sci-fi film Ender's Game, based on Card's 1985 book — a mainstay of geek teen libraries since its release — saying, "Stand against anti-gay activism and deny Orson Scott Card your financial support by pledging to skip Ender's Game."

In response, Orson Scott Card released a statement to Entertainment Weekly to dismiss the boycott's position, arguing that the book itself makes no mention of gay rights, and besides, since the US Supreme Court recently overturned the Defense of Marriage Act, the battle is over (it's not).

He added the rather audacious statement, "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."

That's not an argument that's likely to carry much weight with anyone who was set to boycott his film, especially in Australia, where we're still waiting for the government to introduce legislation that allows gay marriage. On Twitter, the response has been overwhelming.

Earlier this year, Card's appointment to pen a Superman story for DC created a massive backlash against the author, leading to the indefinite postponement of the project after artist Chris Sprouse left.