So is there anything left to boycott? Some have used this news as a sort of go-ahead allowing them to see the movie. "The fact that Orson Scott Card won't make any money on Ender's Game makes it a lot easier to recommend to everybody. It's great. See it," Britton Peele of The Dallas Morning News explained on Twitter. Another user wrote: "As it happens, Orson Scott Card actually isn't [directly] making money off of the Ender's Game film. You can see it with a clear conscience."

But the group that launched the Skip Ender's Game campaign is not backing down. On their page supporting the protest, LGBT group Geeks OUT says: "Pledge to skip Ender's Game and ensure that your entertainment dollars don't support homophobia." And even with the knowledge that Card does not benefit financially from the film, organization member Jono Jarrett told The Wrap that the group is not backing down. "If it turns out that the LGBT community’s refusal to see ‘Ender’s Game’ carries more of a symbolic rejection of Card and his rhetoric than a financial one, I think that’s still a powerful message to content providers," he said.

There are valid reasons both to see the movie and to continue to reject anything associated with Card. As David Wharton writes at Giant Freakin Robot, "I absolutely understand the folks who see this as a moral issue, but I also think on some level the movie should be judged on its own merits — or lack of them — rather than the tangential baggage the source material brings along with it."

And the trick is, by simply reading the book or watching the film you'd be hard pressed to find the influence of Card's frankly terrible views. This is a problem fans of the book have been wrangling with for years. Take, for instance, the 2000 Salon interview Donna Minkowitz conducted with Card. Minkowitz, a self described "Jewish lesbian radical," loved Ender's Game, and was eager to interview Card only to discover just how horrible he was. "It’s one thing to admire a bigot on the page, and another to endure a two-hour conversation with one," she wrote. "And my love and admiration for Card only made it worse. Talking to Klansmen was nothing compared to talking to the author of the most ethical book I’ve ever read."

The Ender's Game film condemns unnecessary violence and preaches acceptance. But even without Card getting any cut of the box office, it's still challenging to reconcile that message with the real-life rhetoric of its original author.

This article is from the archive of our partner The Wire.