“Geeks Out” Trumps Card at Utah Comic-Con

Can the irony be lost on a movement—those who favor same-sex marriage—whose purported goal is tolerance, when they, in fact, continue to display anything but that virtue to those who oppose them?

Harrison Ford in upcoming Ender’s Game film.

This is what Dominic Verner covers in his latest blog post, “Ender’s Game, Card’s Convictions,” for First Things. The blog discusses legendary science fiction writer Orson Scott Card, and the reasons he has been MIA at the most recent Comic-Con’s (San Diego and Utah) even though his most celebrated work—“Ender’s Game”—is slated for its big screen debut this November:

While most geeks would have been thrilled to meet the legendary sci-fi author, Orson Scott Card was not invited to take part. A geeky LGBT group known as Geeks Out had gotten wind of Card’s opposition to redefining marriage; they called for a boycott of the film, and suddenly Card became a liability for the film’s promotion.

Card responded to the personal protest by wondering aloud to Entertainment Weekly: “Now it will be interesting to see whether the…proponents of gay marriage will show tolerance toward those who disagreed with them…”

Verner observed in his blog, “Same-sex marriage proponents may think of Orson Scott Card and the National Organization for Marriage as [alien] invaders…Whatever side of the fence one is on, hopefully all can agree that a little bit of imaginative sympathy would go a long way to judging the matter rightly. As Ender Wiggin would attest, hate sees monsters where there are men, and fear sees enemies where there are brothers.”

Read more here.