Send a missionary

I've written a few times about the boycott of the movie Ender's Game because of the nasty anti-gay comments of Orson Scott Card, the book's author and movie's producer. Though not speaking specifically about Card, Brian Dickerson has an editorial in Sunday's Free Press about boycotts. Dickerson was prompted to write because Stevie Wonder declared he would no longer perform in states with stand-your-ground laws.

Dickerson says boycotts are not new. Religious communities have used shunning for many generations.

His objection to boycotts has two parts. The first is effectiveness -- it is rare for the targeted group to actually change their behavior. Though wasn't there something about disinvesting in apartheid South Africa?

The second is with boycotts, easier to organize than ever before, we extend the fault lines in society -- red and blue TV, red and blue churches, red and blue music. "The less we rub elbows with those with whom we disagree politically, the less we are at risk at discovering that we have anything in common with them."

Want to change their opinion? Engage with your opponents. Or, as Dickerson says it, send a missionary.

He makes sense.

Should those behind the Stop Ender's Game campaign instead form a delegation to meet Mr. Card? Will he agree to such a meeting? If that meeting ever happened, would it change his mind? Would the visit make any more difference than the boycott? I'm still not going to see the movie.

Where people will listen to the hate

It appears that as Western countries expand equality for gay people many countries in the rest of the world are working quickly to restrict gay rights and make punishments more harsh. Alistair Stewart of the Kaleidoscope Trust says that as our opponents find their message less welcome in the West they move to countries that will listen to them. And, as the mess in Uganda (and Russia, and Nigeria) shows, they are very good at stirring up trouble.



A producer for the film Ender's Game, the one subject to a boycott, was part of a panel at Comic-Con. The first question was how involved Orson Scott Card was in the making of the movie. In addition to supplying the original book, he was co-producer. However, the answer the producer gave neatly sidestepped the issue, instead affirming that Lionsgate, the company that made the film, is very pro-gay. The audience responded with cheers.

So, did they cheer to hear the company is pro-gay? That is good news. Or was it because the audience felt they've been given permission to see the movie in spite of Card's anti-gay work? I suppose I should be more charitable.

From my pocket to his

Jim Burroway has an excellent post on the Orson Scott Card dispute over the movie Ender's Game. Boycotts may not work. An example of that is the National Organization for Marriage boycott of Starbucks that caused the stock price to rise. So we may not cause economic harm to the target. Even so, political statements by the artists (see Dixie Chicks in 2003) can have commercial consequences. Card has said some nasty stuff about us. So, Burroway concludes:

But when they sell it, we enter the land of commerce, and we are all free to decide whether we want to buy what they’re selling. And my money just won’t go from my pocket to Card’s. It’s as simple as that.

I got to thinking about the plot of Ender's Game as summarized by Wikipedia to answer the question why teenage Ender succeeded while well trained adult military men failed. A couple interlocking ideas:

* Ender didn't have a fully developed moral code and a fully developed understanding of consequences. This allowed him to be more ruthless than his superiors with less empathy for the victims.

* Ender was tricked. He was told it was a game, but it wasn't. Some people would blast away at bad guys in a video game but would not do the same with real people.

But it has been 35 years since I read the short version of the story and I'm relying on the accuracy of Wikipedia.

Moot point

Back in the late 70s a novelette version of the book Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card appeared in one of my science fiction magazines. The full book was published in 1984 and has quite a few followers, resulting in lots of prequels and sequels. Since then Card, a Mormon, has revealed himself to be quite the anti-gay bigot. In one of his many nasty statements he called for armed overthrow if the Calif. gay marriage ban didn't pass in 2008. He also joined the board of the National Organization for Marriage.

But now that Ender's Game is coming out as a movie this fall Card is singing a slightly different tune. He says gay marriage is now a moot point. Then with a great deal of chutzpah, he declares proponents of gay marriage (meaning us) can show their tolerance of him by going to see his movie.

The organization GeeksOUT, which prompted Card's comments, responded by saying, well, if the marriage issue is moot, you can resign from the board of NOM and call for it to shut down. They have a website Skip Ender's Game where you can declare you won't watch the movie, buy the action figures, or otherwise put money in Card's pockets. I tried it, but didn't complete the process when the wording shifted from signing a petition to subscribing to a list.

And, in case you're tempted by the movie, here's a plot summary (at least as much as I remember from 30 years ago): Ender is a teenager, and with some of his teenage friends, ends up at a quasi-military camp. They play a series of military-like games with each other and Ender comes up with some innovative solutions to the games. The adults around him invite him to the next level. They really are military and they need his help in turning back an invasion of aliens. His final game, which he wins, turns out to be an actual battle.

That leads to a question: How can this teen do better than the greatest military minds around him? I'm not going to spend money to find out.

I checked the plot on Wikipedia. My memory isn't too far off.