Now here's something I can easily boycott...

[shadowkat]

Well, I now finally know why everyone on Face Book wants me to boycott Hobby Lobby. Thank you shipperx who posted a lengthy recital of the Supreme Court ruling and Ruth Bader Ginesberg's dissent. Also, how great is Ruth? Best Supreme Court Justice on that panel.

Never heard of Hobby Lobby. So it's not all that hard to boycott. Love being told to boycott companies that I did not know existed. Now I can go on ignoring their existence.
Just wish I could boycott the five male justices on the Supreme Court. Who are once again giving Catholicism and religious rights a bad rap. As if it needed any help in that department. We really need to stop taking away or infringing on other rights in the name of religious rights. Last time I checked, someone's right to their religious beliefs did not take precedence over everything or give you the right to hurt people.
Gun ownership and manufacture and the right to own and fire guns at other living things is against my religious beliefs. Can we do away with guns please?

I loved the Daily Kos, which said...

Oh sorry, but paying for war violates my spiritual beliefs...you know, Thou Shall Not Kill" - so send me back $3 trillion.

Nailed it.

On the boycotting bit? I'm not sure it always works. It might. I don't believe in boycotting writers. Movie studios, yes. Publishing Companies? Depends. Corporations? Definitely but again, depends. They employ a lot of innocent people who are struggling to make ends meet. How would you feel if someone boycotted your company and you ended up getting laid-off as a result? It could happen.

But writers, artists, entertainers - smacks of censorship somehow and that makes me uneasy. Should we silence them because we don't like or despise something they did ages ago or recently, which we heard about through the media? To what degree do we even know it is true? Having done the criminal law bit - I can tell you that indictments and criminal convictions and confessions don't necessarily make it true. Lot's of gray area that very few people know about. You sort of have to have done criminal law to know whereof I speak.

Also art isn't always a reflection of the person's bad deeds. People are more than their actions, after all. We aren't defined solely by one or several deeds. Isolated or otherwise. A lot of people don't appear to understand this? Or so I've found? I guess I do because I worked in the Kansas Defender Project for a bit, and had to defend people who had robbed and murdered others. One guy that we were defending was this amazing artist, he was also a psychopath and in solitary confinement, think Hannibal Lector. We were defending his right to humane treatment, because everyone deserves to be treated humanely regardless of their crimes - anything else falls under vengeance. These people were complicated. One guy, the armed bank robber, was actually rather kind and had found ways to help others - including writing a pamphlet for drug abuse, and forming a drug rehabilitation support group while in prison. (Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary is a lot like the Prison in Orange is the New Black.)

And there are writers, philosophers, etc who historically did bad things, yet still added a great deal to our culture:

Socrates hated women and was a misogynist. Yet at the same time a brilliant philosopher.
Plato believed women had no souls.
Ghod only knows what Sophocles did.
TS Eliot was a sexist jerk (horrible to his wife) and anti-semitic. But an amazing poet.
Alfred Hitchcock...well, he was sexist and not nice to women, yet had a loving relationship with his wife and a brilliant director.
Flannery O'Connor - racist, but a great story teller

I admittedly haven't really read anything by Orson Scott Card, Walter Breen, Marion Zimmer Bradley (Sharra's Exile was about it, and I can't seem to make it through Mists of Avalon) or Anne Perry (not a fan of her writing - did try, after I saw Heavenly Creatures, partly out of curiousity. You can't tell it's the same woman.) But what they've done has little affect on my desire to read them. Actually, I've made a concerted effort to ignore these reports. I can't do anything about them. How does knowing this information help me or the world in any way? Does it stop others from doing this? Does it heal those who were hurt? Does it change how I view their novels? No, not really. Too late in the game to have much effect, I suspect. Also, being human, it's possible their books are helpful in other ways. I hear Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card is an anti-war book? And you really can't tell he's a homophobic bigot when reading it? Same deal with Mists of Avalon. Should a writer's actions done outside their writing life affect how we view their work and to what degree? How much do we need to know about the artist? How much should we? And do we really need to know anything at all?

Corporations - I get boycotting. That makes sense. Although not sure how useful it is. Artists and Writers not so much.

Comments

[flake-sake.livejournal.com]

Hm, I guess boycotting cooperations who do vile things is a no brainer, although it is often hard to do with the big ones that work with mirror brands and so on.

I agree, that it is more difficile with authors. I don't think, we should exclude any knowledge from our brain, because the person who found it was a horrible person. But that doesn't mean we should not argue or give them a pass.

I can claim that Plato was a smart man in many ways, concerning women he was simply a total jerk. Also authors can be boycotted by not paying for their work, which does not mean, not reading it.

The thing with authors like MZB is, she writes novels for entertainment. When I read a novel, I want to loose myself in it. I want to feel for the characters and learn to get to know their world. It's like taking a walk in someone else's head. And I don't want to take a walk in a rapists head.
So while I would not refuse to learn from someone, no matter what they had done, I will absolutely refuse to pay jerks (mute in the case of MZB, since she is dead) and I simply don't want to be entertained by them. It's too intimate an act for me.

[local-max.livejournal.com]

"Also art isn't always a reflection of the person's bad deeds. People are more than their actions, after all. We aren't defined solely by one or several deeds. Isolated or otherwise. A lot of people don't appear to understand this? Or so I've found? I guess I do because I worked in the Kansas Defender Project for a bit, and had to defend people who had robbed and murdered others. One guy that we were defending was this amazing artist, he was also a psychopath and in solitary confinement, think Hannibal Lector. We were defending his right to humane treatment, because everyone deserves to be treated humanely regardless of their crimes - anything else falls under vengeance. These people were complicated. One guy, the armed bank robber, was actually rather kind and had found ways to help others - including writing a pamphlet for drug abuse, and forming a drug rehabilitation support group while in prison."

Thank you for writing this. While I do hold views very similar to this about people -- that, ultimately, people are complicated, and one can't define a person entirely by one action (or even set of actions) -- I also don't have the personal experience to back this up. And while reading about people can help to a degree...I think it's a bit different actually having experience, or (I suppose) knowing someone who has experience.

[londonkds.livejournal.com]

The thing about Card is that he actively takes part in and funds political campaigns for homophobia, so that any money of yours that goes to him might be used to actively promote harm to LGBT people.

[cactuswatcher.livejournal.com]

Although the news sort of glanced over it, I believe this ruling only applies to closely-held corporations, which in Hobby Lobby's case means a very large family owned business. I don't think it applies to corporations that would be listed on one of the stock exchanges as we usually think of corporations.

We've got a Hobby Lobby nearby. I wandered in one day, and wandered back out. It seems they specialize in traditional women's hobbies and crafts, a bit like Michaels, but with more emphasis on hobbies and less on the practical. I have gone in Michaels, shopped for things like a nice pair of scissors, and felt comfortable. I felt distinctly in the wrong place in Hobby Lobby. A real boycott by women against Hobby Lobby might actually do some good with that one business. But it wouldn't affect affect the ruling on closely-held corporations.

[genericmarn.livejournal.com]

Ruth Bader Ginsburg is my hero.