You are absolutely free to buy or not buy Orson Scott Card’s Superman comic or tickets to the Ender’s Game movie. It’s your money, you’re allowed to spend it however you like, and “I don’t want to watch anything written by a homophobe” is exactly as valid as “I don’t want to watch anything with a romance subplot” or “I don’t want to watch anything with Bendydick Cummingsnatch in it, I hate his face.”
But I think that it’s wrong to petition DC Comics to fire him or to refuse to stock his books in your store. (I was wrong about this– see comments.)
Firing Orson Scott Card punishes the wrong thing. Not giving money to Orson Scott Card doesn’t punish being a homophobe; it punishes being public about being a homophobe. Homophobic authors who never wrote about their homophobia are not going to suffer from the boycotts. Personally, I don’t want the homophobes to be quiet about their homophobia, smugly self-satisfied about how oppressed and persecuted they are by the pro-gay mafia. I want them to stop being homophobes. I am unclear how harming Mr. Card’s career will persuade him that homophobia is wrong.
Second, I believe that it is wrong to punish writers with loss of career for expressing controversial ideas.
You know why? Because “homosexuality isn’t a sin” is controversial. Because “black people should learn to read” was, and “atheists should be allowed to testify in court,” and “people other than white male landowners should have the right to vote,” and… look, name anything we consider obviously a good idea, it probably went through a period of being controversial. “A lot of people dislike this idea” is absolutely no evidence about whether it’s a good idea or not.
The only way that anyone has figured out to sort out whether controversial ideas are good or bad is to argue about them until a majority of people are convinced. In order to argue about ideas, you have to have people who are willing to support them. And you’re not going to have that if the smartest and most articulate supporters of any given idea– that is, the writers– are punished for expressing ideas that disagree too much with what the majority holds sacred.
–Of course, it’s possible that you just happen to be the only person on the entire planet who is magically correct about everything, in which case you can infallibly sort out which controversial ideas are good and which controversial ideas are bad and punish anyone who disagrees. How lucky we are that you have this power.
I suppose you could say “well, free and open debate is all very well for some things, but homophobia hurts real people! We should stigmatize beliefs that hurt people!” On the other hand, it was the consensus belief for a long time that accepting atheism would lead people to become atheists and thus suffer an eternity of torture in hell. Homophobia does not cause eternal torture. “Yes, but they were wrong about that.” And how the fuck would they have known that they were wrong about that unless atheists were allowed to say their piece?
If homosexuality, as Mr. Card believes, risks destroying society itself via destroying the institution of marriage, this is information I would like to have. At the moment, I have read the best arguments anti-homosexuality people have to present, and I have found them scientifically and anthropologically laughable, morally bankrupt, and utterly unjustified unless you accept the premises of a certain brand of Christianity. But I am glad that I had access to those arguments, and I oppose anything that is going to significantly punish people for offering them up.
Why is it unethical to refuse to carry something in a store? I mean, isn’t that just the store owner refusing to purchase the book? That I can’t understand at all. Stores have limited shelf space. If a store doesn’t want to give shelf space to a book when they don’t love, or which they think will hurt their business, or which they think won’t sell well, they should not feel any remorse in not giving shelf space to that book.
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Separately there is the issue of the contract and the company.
Card does more than just be a homophobe. He’s on the board of NOM, an organization that openly advocates for the execution of gay people. There’s a line of “we can all agree to be civil” sort of discourse — and while it is rapidly changing with respect to gay people — I think we can all agree that advocating for institutionalized mass murder is outside of the realm of acceptable discourse.
I don’t want people to lose their jobs for their political views, even vile and abhorrent ones. I feel like it was incredibly poor taste to hire Card for Superman — the champion of the oppressed! — while he was advocating for the execution of gay people. I think it’s shitty that Superman, who helped bring down the KKK, is being handed over to Card.
If I were the editor, which I’m not, I’d probably try to offer alternative him work on one of the right-wing themed superheroes (Batman, Green Lantern, say) or to engage the kill fee in his contract. But I’m not, and presumably this bullshit is all intended to drum up sales orders.
I don’t know if it matters, but this is one job for Card, who’s a freelancer. No one is trying to shut down his fiction career.
I’m not sure whether it’s that people care more about comics, or that they care more about Superman.
” “I don’t want to watch anything with Bendydick Cummingsnatch in it, I hate his face.””
Wow… Please tell me that’s not what you think, Ozy.
“I don’t know if it matters, but this is one job for Card, who’s a freelancer. No one is trying to shut down his fiction career.”
That really shouldn’t make a difference.
I don’t really see the connection between Card being hired by a major company to write a book about one of their characters and Card having a career writing his own novels or comics. Like, sure, free speech, whatever, but I don’t think “being fired from one specific job” is going to prevent Card from getting his opinion out there.
Also I don’t really understand why bookstores have an obligation to stock a book just because it’s controversial. Does that extend to every book? Are bookstore owners not given leeway to express their own opinions on the subject? That seems counterproductive to the project of encouraging discussion.
I would like to +1 everything benleham said.
Regardless of whether or not firing Card for his views would be ethical, I feel pretty let down by DC’s choice to give him Superman.
And yeah, I think bookstore owners should get to decide to stock whatever books they want, for any reason? I mean, if you don’t want to stock books by homophobes that’s your choice, the same way you can choose only to stock only explicitly Christian books, or only books about crystal healing, or only books with cute pictures of cats…
Unfortunately, part of what makes things stop being controversial is people standing up to the haters. I mean, there are still people for whom certain kinds of racism are still “controversial” (in the sense that huge swaths of the southern US still believe that white folks are superior to black folks, for instance). So I get what you’re saying, but being gay just doesn’t seem controversial to me…so who gets to say if it is or isn’t any longer?
Gametime: it really should not matter if its one gig or not.its firing him based not on his work but on his opinions outside of work.
It sets a precedent that publisher should fire someone for their unpopular opinions. That’s not cool.
Obviously people have the right to not buy that issue, or even to stockit at their store.
it punishes being public about being a homophobe.
I am quite okay with punishing that, myself. I don’t want to make people pure in their thoughts and hearts–I want to make the world safe for people of all sexual orientations. Making public homophobia socially unacceptable seems like a good step in that direction.
I’m not really interested in a “teach the controversy” approach as to whether gay people are full human beings deserving of love and happiness, or whether they should all be killed. I consider that controversy pretty settled actually.
I think Card, like a lot of other homophobes and other, similar types of jerk, suffers from false consensus; the idea that not only is his opinion right and popular, it’s in the majority. And I think that it’s EXTREMELY important that we disabuse this notion. Homophobes individually are really loud, but if every non-homophobe in the country collectively got together and said “No,” we could drown them out really easily.
I also think that homophobia shouldn’t be rewarded. Granted, DC isn’t rewarding him explicitly for homophobia, but Card is a particularly awful hater with a board seat on the National Organization for Marriage as his other job. It’s one thing to hire someone who has said some awful things, as long as it doesn’t effect job performance; it’s entirely another to hire someone like Card, whose rhetoric is incredibly vile AND works for an organization dedicated to denying human rights to an entire group of people on arbitrary grounds.
If that’s not worth firing him, I’m not sure what is.
I think this post is so easy to disagree with, I want to throw in a “I see where you’re coming from”–and I think that’s the question of, what if your bosses were homophobes, and you were a vocal supporter of gay rights? Should they have the right to fire you then?
And my only real answer to that comes down to “but I’m right and they’re wrong and that does make a difference,” and honestly there are implications to that statement that I can’t entirely justify. Only that I believe there are situations where seeking rightness is more important than seeking fairness, and this is one of them.
…I really loved Ender’s Game as a kid, too. I mean, zero-G laser tag. Geez. :/
I could agree with all this except that all this gives money to Mr. Card, which in turn he will give to the anti-gay organizations he is so loudly part of, which in turn gets donated to anti-gay politicians (who are frequently also prolife and have other such beliefs) and used in other ways that actively hurt people like me.
um…excuse me? So if I owned a bookstore, I’d have to stock every reprehensible fucknut’s books and give equal voice to every asshole bigot out there because…because equal rights? Because otherwise I get the Waggly Finger Of Disapproval from someone who feels that just because I own a business I no longer have any right to decide what I get to stock or not stock? Sure, it’d be one thing if I refused to have anti-gay employees, or Muslim employees, but…
Let’s take a different analogy here. Instead of OSC, let’s say… restaurants and hamburgers. Yes, as a restaurant owner, I don’t have a right to ban people from eating hamburgers. I don’t even care if the McDonalds down the road does a roaring hamburger business! But that doesn’t mean I should have to have hamburgers on the menu of my Indian restaurant, or my sushi joint, or my pizza place, or my specialty slushie summer cart. I actually get to say “Nope, hamburgers don’t fit with the ethos of my store’s menu. You want hamburgers, go somewhere that serves them.” And yes, I also get to say “You, sir, are an ignorant, overprivileged, pointlessly demanding fucknut” to someone who tells me that refusing to serve hamburgers means I’m violating someone’s hamburger rights. There is no such thing as hamburger rights. There is also no such thing as stocking rights. This is, incidentally, why I can’t take my own published book to my college bookstore and go “HDU NOT STOCK THIS RANDOM LITERARY TRANSLATION OF AN INDIAN GUY WHO HAS FUCK-ALL TO DO WITH YOUR TEXTBOOKS”.
“You know why? Because “homosexuality isn’t a sin” is controversial.”
Oh, right, the “teach the controversy” argument. Do you also support the EQUAL teaching of intelligent design, creationism and the Raven myth in your biology classes, Ozy? Because that’s the logical extrapolation of your weak-ass argument.
Not giving money to Orson Scott Card doesn’t punish being a homophobe; it punishes being public about being a homophobe.
Putting a rapist in jail doesn’t punish having rape fantasies; it punishes acting on them. Your point, I see it not.
Okay, fair, I’m wrong about the store thing. Stores not buying the comic is just a special case of people not buying the comic.
gqbrielle: That’s my point about it punishing being publically homophobic. If Stephanie Meyer gave to homophobic organizations (which she might– she’s also AFAIK a devout Mormon), I would have no idea because she’s not public about it. You can’t boycott everyone who gives money to groups you don’t like.
Macavity: Science classes should teach the scientific consensus on particular issues (which is credible *because* science has one of the best methods of making sure that alternate ideas get listened to– I mean, if creationists found evidence that God made everything 6000 years ago, it would be published in a peer-reviewed journal). I also think a creationist writer shouldn’t be fired from writing Superman.
I’m with Cliff. Punishing or disincentivising public homophobia is pretty much the goal, no? If Card believes homosexuality is a sin then there is probably not much anyone can do to stop him holding that belief. And to be honest it’s not the belief that hurts people, that’s just a metaphysical opinion, it’s the actions that come from his lack of respect for gay people as a result of that opinion. He can believe what he likes. I’d even say he is free to discuss those beliefs (although he should expect criticism) But when that belief infringes on others, he should be held accountable for his actions. And from what I have read about NOM his actions are pretty egregious.
I really don’t see the problem with individuals petitioning DC to kill the contract. He has a right to his opinion, and a right to express it, but he has to accept the social consequences of that opinion. With a job as public as “writer for a major Hollywood production,” that could include losing your job if the reaction is strong enough. The execs have a movie to make, and if they believe that Card is a liability to that movie’s box office success, they absolutely have a right to fire him. His out-of-work activity is affecting his work performance. The people petitioning are just telling the execs, “So you know, I want to give you money, but I don’t want that money to go to a guy serving on the board of a group that wants to kill me or my friends. I think some other people might feel the same way. You might want to look into that.”
I guess I’m a free speech absolutist, but I think refusing to publish Card for his views outside the story itself is wrong. (This is different from cancelling Frank Miller’s vile HolyTerror, where the work itself was offensive).
Boycott the issue, refuse to stock it – all that is Honorable. But firing Card for that is against the spirit of the first amendment.
I get your position, Monkey, but I think invoking the “spirit of the First Amendment” in situations like this is erroneous – the First is about the government not restricting speech. It has nothing to do with privately owned companies deciding to fire people for saying hateful things.
Sorry if that ^ was over the top nit-picky and rude. I am possibly hypersensitive to how people use the First Amendment, given how often it’s abused by assholes on the internet. Sorry Monkey.
Totally agree w/this post, but I rarely say so, since I get in trouble for it.
But: yeah. Absolutely yeah.
in the sense that huge swaths of the southern US still believe that white folks are superior to black folks, for instance
And so do huge swaths of the rest of the country. About 1/3 of the south is black and the majority of southerners live in well-integrated neighborhoods. I am tired of white yankees who live in 98% white areas, talk trash about evilll southerners who supposedly believe XYZ. Actions speak louder than words, and if you live in a segregated area, you are IN PRACTICE more racist than most of us evilll southerners.
“Macavity: Science classes should teach the scientific consensus on particular issues (which is credible *because* science has one of the best methods of making sure that alternate ideas get listened to– I mean, if creationists found evidence that God made everything 6000 years ago, it would be published in a peer-reviewed journal). I also think a creationist writer shouldn’t be fired from writing Superman.
”
Ozy, the “scientific consensus” on my race by European and North American scientists, 200 years ago, or hell, 100 years ago, was that we were inherently inferior and barbarous and deserved colonisation and cultural imperialism. It was peer-reviewed and everything. So…forgive me for not hearing the Hallelujah chorus and seeing radiant bursts of white light when someone uses the term like a trump card. The scientific community’s a lot less scientific and a lot more political than most people want to think – unless they’re the ones staring down the barrel, of course.
Macavity: Okay…? I mean, science comes from a racist society and is often very very racist, and while science is generally self-correcting it’s also *slowly* self-correcting and causes a lot of damage in the meantime, but I’m not sure what that has to do with creationism or with whether Orson Scott Card should be fired from DC Comics.
ETA: seriously, what is your argument here? “Science is racist and therefore not credible, so we should… teach… creationism…? And this has to do with Orson Scott Card somehow?”
TheLaplaceDemon: the journalist and free speech activist Nat Hentoff has written extensively on the idea that regardless of whether the first amendment *requires* private businesses to adhere to it, there is a moral and ethical impetus that they *should*.
The main point is that he’s not being threatened with being fired because of anything he said or wrote *for DC.*
“ETA: seriously, what is your argument here? “Science is racist and therefore not credible, so we should… teach… creationism…? And this has to do with Orson Scott Card somehow?””
Actually, what I was saying was not that science is racist, it’s that some scientists are racist and have received social validation for their bad science. My point, simply, was that “teach the controversy” (which is an analogue to “writers should not fear social consequences for expressing their views”) has some serious downsides when the “controversy” is essentially whether or not a group of people is essentially inferior or criminal or evil. I wouldn’t support someone stating that atheists are morally inferior, or black people, or gay people, etc. The idea that someone preaching the essential inferiority of any group of human beings is “expressing their views” in a “neutral” fashion is a common one, and an incredibly privileged one. They are preaching hate, and should be treated as such. Would you make a similar argument about someone refusing to stock Westboro Baptist pamphlets? Or if the KKK put out White Man Comics tomorrow, would you be demanding stores stock them too? Etc.
(I realise that this argument is totally moot now because you walked back your statement on stores stocking Card, and thank you for that. I’m just trying to clarify my position at this point.)
“I don’t want to make people pure in their thoughts and hearts–I want to make the world safe for people of all sexual orientations.”
Exactly this.