Orson Scott Card’s acclaimed sci-fi novel Ender’s Game is finally making the jump to the big screen this year, but his anti-gay personal views is what’s still grabbing headlines. Activist groups have suggested that people protest the movie, but Card has responded and said that gay marriage has nothing to do with his story.
In a statement to Entertainment Weekly, Card called the gay marriage issue “moot” now, since the recent Supreme Court decisions that struck down the Defense of Marriage Act and allowed gay marriage to resume in California.
“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,” Card wrote. Later in the statement, he writes, “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.”
Card’s views against gay marriage have been well documented. The Huffington Post notes that he was criticized by Salon back in 2000. The Mormon and National Organization for Marriage board member wrote a piece in the Mormon Times back in 2008 that has been widely referenced. In that piece, he suggested, “Married people attempting to raise children with the hope that they, in turn, will be reproductively successful, have every reason to oppose the normalization of homosexual unions.”
His views took center stage earlier this year, when DC was about to publish a Superman comic he wrote and later pulled it. At the time, some speculated on how his views would affect Ender’s Game. An insider told THR, “We’re adapting a work, not a person. The work will stand on its own..”
Gay rights activists began campaigns against Ender’s Game. According to E! News, Geeks Out! has recently started its own campaign against the movie.
Summit’s Ender’s Game doesn’t hit theaters until Nov. 1 and stars Harrison Ford, Abigail Breslin, Moises Arias and Hailee Steinfeld.
image: Amazon