Maggie Gallagher, the founder of the
National Organization for Marriage (NOM), has described a boycott of
the film Ender's Game
over its author's anti-gay views “the heart of McCarthyism.”
NOM has previously called on supporters
to “dump” Starbucks and General Mills over their support for gay
marriage.
Orson Scott Card, a board member of
NOM, pleaded for tolerance after Geeks OUT announced its boycott,
saying that last month's Supreme Court rulings made the issue moot.
“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.
“With the recent Supreme Court
ruling, the gay marriage issue becomes moot. The Full Faith and
Credit clause of the Constitution will, sooner or later, give legal
force in every state to any marriage contract recognized by any other
state.”
“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.”
But the group rejected
the plea, saying that nothing is “more democratic and tolerant
than a consumer boycott, rooted in the ideas of free market
accountability.”
“Orson Scott Card, we can tolerate
your anti-gay activism, your right-wing extremism, your campaign of
fear-mongering and insults, but we're not going to pay you for it,”
the group wrote in response.
Writing at the National
Review Online, Gallagher dodged Card's assertion that the matter
was settled, opting instead to criticize the boycott itself.
“It seems very strange to me that so
many artists and people on the Left are supporting the idea that to
make art in the mainstream you have to have the right political
opinions,” Gallagher wrote. “This used to be considered the
heart of McCarthyism: Loyalty oaths for filmmakers as the condition
for working in the film industry. (These were imposed by the
industry, not the government, remember, in response to public
pressure).”
“I suspect this boycott will be a
failure,” she added.