Intolerance, Orson Scott Card and 'Ender's Game'.

I write a lot of things on this blog about tolerance, gay characters, bi characters, and my excitement in the way these things are so often being tackled in the environment of young adult literature.

I've even mentioned Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game as part of a post about the broad spectrum that young adult writing is showing to our teens today.

After what I've read today, I imagine that the last thing that Scott Card would have wanted was to be grouped in with the bunch of writers and titles I listed there.

At www.avclub.com, Scott Card has been quoted as wanting to ask that his own long standing and loud intolerances and homophobia not to adversely effect the upcoming sales for his movie based on Ender's Game. This has come after numerous gay and lesbian groups have made the decision to boycott a book-to-movie release by a man who has previously stated that homosexuality is often the product of rape or abuse.

..........

From the article in The A. V. Club: "Card has issued a statement to Entertainment Weekly repudiating the boycott, saying, “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.” After thus establishing that gay rights did not exist in 1984—gay people not having been invented until that one episode of thirtysomething—Card similarly invoked the way time inevitably gives way to change, and how we must all learn to publicly give the impression of accepting that change with bitter resignation, if we are to continue making money." (read more)

I honestly don't know what to say here.

A lot has already been said. As soon as I reposted it up on Twitter, it caught a couple more retweets and spurted a conversation that had absolutely nothing to say in favour of Scott Card as a human being. Of course. I myself am a bi-sexual woman and a number of my friends are bi or outright gay. Nobody wants to hear their lifestyle being called a "tragic genetic mix-up".

Still, I find myself having a bit of trouble stooping down to his level and waxing lyrical against his chosen lifestyle beliefs. It seems like a great waste of time of my breath and efforts. So I'm going to say that maybe Scott Card might have been able to get away with the statements he's made up to 30 years ago, but it's becoming pretty clear that it won't fly now.

And that's good.

If you can't say anything nice, Scott Card, maybe consider shutting your mouth.