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.