And no one is trying to take away your granddad's double barreled 12 gauge. [...] This used to happen in the UK and Australia but they did something about it and it doesn't happen anymore. We need to do what they so sensibly did.

Irony:

Category A: Rimfire rifles (not semi-automatic), shotguns (not pump-action or semi-automatic), air rifles, and paintball markers. A "Genuine Reason" must be provided for a Category A firearm.

N.B.:

For each firearm a "Genuine Reason" must be given, relating to pest control, hunting, target shooting, or collecting. Self-defense is not accepted as a reason for issuing a license, even though it may be legal under certain circumstances to use a legally held firearm for self-defense.
Each firearm in Australia must be registered to the owner by serial number.

[Emphasis mine, passim.]

Some Americans own 3-D printers, which can make a variety of plastic objects. Do you think Americans should or should not be allowed to use this technology in their own homes?

Should 62%
Should not 29%
Don’t Know/Refused (Vol.) 9%

Nearly a third of this sample would not allow you to own a 3d printer at all. I'll take their opinions on guns with a grain of salt.

My grandfather, a WWII vet and a hunter, held me upright and helped me to shoot his 12 ga. when I was four years old. It's not a hobby for some of us; it's a tool and a normal aspect of everyday life. From that age, I learned to respect firearms. As a child, I never so much as touched a gun without permission in part because I knew what they could do and I knew I could shoot them with supervision. Contrast this certain of my peers from the suburbs, who would not be allowed to use guns until they were much older, would do things like shoot BB guns at each other. They basically considered guns toys. Do not forget that we live in a country of over 300 million people. There are many different cultures here and ways of life different from your own.

Potentially anyone who rents. On average, I receive about one or two misdelivered letters per day. That's right, per day. It's mostly what I would consider junk mail, though its addressed to specific people who used to live here not just "Current Resident". The worst, though, is the mail for an old lady who used to live here a few tenants back. I can guess at her age due to the frequency of AARP materials sent to her (to say nothing of her apparent reliance on snail mail). But in addition to this, there are the catalogs, the requests for support for various ministries, the offers for neat stuff they'll bill medicare for, etc. etc.

When I first moved here I would write return to sender and stick the letter into the outbox. After it turned out to be futile (and, besides, one of our postal workers would put the bloody thing back in my box) I gave up. Junk mail takes up more space in my trash than any other item and regrettably recycling isn't an option in this area.

"We ended up not winning it or passing on it, depending on how you want to view it. And the world would have been a lot different if we'd done it," Otellini told me in a two-hour conversation during his last month at Intel. "The thing you have to remember is that this was before the iPhone was introduced and no one knew what the iPhone would do... At the end of the day, there was a chip that they were interested in that they wanted to pay a certain price for and not a nickel more and that price was below our forecasted cost. I couldn't see it. It wasn't one of these things you can make up on volume. And in hindsight, the forecasted cost was wrong and the volume was 100x what anyone thought." It was the only moment I heard regret slip into Otellini's voice during the several hours of conversations I had with him. "The lesson I took away from that was, while we like to speak with data around here, so many times in my career I've ended up making decisions with my gut, and I should have followed my gut," he said. "My gut told me to say yes."

So, he made a perfectly rational decision based upon the data he had available. It turned out in the long run that he would have been better off if he had acted otherwise, so looking back on it he says it would be better to reject rational decision making. I find this unconvincing. In my experience, people have a fantastic way of revising their own personal histories and 'the gut' is a great tool to do so. If I made the best choice I could, given the information I had, and it turned out incorrect I can always look back on things and say that my gut told me otherwise. By this means the chief protagonist of my personal history will always be correct, always know the right thing to do, even when it turned out to be wrong.

These are poor students; they're not paying their own tuition anyway, and they tend to drop out because they're behind in math and other subjects. This is a a remedial year to make up for the poor college prep they got from their low-income schools and families.

Okay.

College administrator #1: How can we get 5 years of Pell Grants, student loan money, and cash from the NSF from students in exchange for a 4 year degree?
College administrator #2: How about making them stay longer? We can call it 'academic redshirt.' By likening it to something we do for athletes, it'll make it much more saleable!
College administrator #1: Fucking brilliant! Here, have a raise! You've earned it!

Better?

(I should say, in spite of the cynicism I share with GP, this doesn't sound like a bad deal for the students.)

Or to put it another way, "[Goldman v. U.S.'s] limitation on Fourth Amendment protection is, in the present day, bad physics as well as bad law, for reasonable expectations of privacy may be defeated by electronic as well as physical invasion."

I have a reasonable expectation of privacy if I close the door on a phone booth. Logging into email with a password is not the best security, to be sure. But does this really confer less of a reasonable expectation of privacy than closing a glass door and carrying on a conversation over unencrypted phone lines?

It's like complaining about someone being able to hear your radio broadcasts in plain language.

It's rather more like complaining that someone is wiretapping your phone. An analog land-line is unencrypted and most of the wire that carries it belongs to someone else. Though its routed through many different places, there's one intended recipient and because it takes a directed effort to listen to it (unlike listening in on a broadcast), there remains a reasonable expectation of privacy.

So, can I listen in on your land-line, unencrypted phone conversations without a warrant?

I believe you're splitting hairs.

Hair-splitting is what this whole conversation is about. We're talking about the amount of money from a movie ticket that will offer material support to someone whose views are regarded as reprehensible, after the cash from that same movie ticket has gone to paying everything involved in the making and marketing of that movie, paying shareholders, financing the movie theaters, paying taxes, etc. etc. The question we're hair-splitting about is whether that fraction of money constitutes support for the views or implicates the ticket buyer in some of the activities the artist engages outside of his art. I think I'd find an objection to buying the Ender's Game book easier to understand than a ticket to the movie (recognizing, still, that there's nothing homophobic in the book and much of the price would still go to taxes, shareholders, production, marketing, and the bookstore rather than royalties). But it seems to me that it will take some very fine distinctions before the case can be made that purchasing a ticket to see this movie (which, again, does not as far as we know have content in it that would be considered homophobic) is either morally or ethically objectionable.

I'd suggest if you think that's the sole reason OSC has people riled up you may want to do a little more research.

Fair enough. Most of what people have cited here has been membership with NOM. That is, most of what people have cited who've not simply indulged in name-calling and unhelpful comparisons. Incidentally, thank you for the civil conversation.

Thank heavens we don't have places called libraries where you can borrow books and movies for free.

This is true, but I think it would be insufficient for this line of reasoning. Books in libraries are bought based on their popularity. If Ender's Game is checked out frequently, the library will buy more books by Card. What's more, when the book wears out from frequent use they'll have to replace it. All of this will result in royalties for the artist, somewhere down the line.

Of course, one may well say that the actual amount of money caused by you checking out a book for movie from the library would be infinitesimally small. But consider that the discussion here is about buying a movie ticket. After all the money that goes to the studio, marketing, shareholders, the production crew, actors, the guy who sells the tickets, the guy who cleans the bathroom at the theater, how much of the $10 your ticket cost will likely go to OSC?

But the issue here isn't just giving money to people one disagrees with anyway. Let's suppose for the sake of argument that Card gets a penny from the ticket purchase. Of course, whatever he gets in royalties will be taxed, so half of that penny at least will go to the federal government. Further, LDS members give a tithe of their income. That leaves your contribution to OSC at $0.0045. The man's likely to spend a goodly amount of money on his house, education for his kids, taking care of family members, retirement investment, etc. It would be hard to guess quite what goes to what. But let's be generous and say he spends %10 post-taxes of all the money he gets travelling to anti-SSM rallies, paying for anti-SSM pamphlets, giving to anti-SSM politicians, and helping to fund NOM. At this point, the contribution of your ticket toward those causes, filtered through all these intermediaries and in fact made so you can enjoy a sci-fi film, is down to $0.00045.

Folks here are saying they won't buy a movie ticket, not because they don't want to see the movie or regard the movie itself as homophobic, mind you, but because a fraction of the money involved will go to someone who advocates views regarded as reprehensible. If inadvertently contributing $0.0045 to a cause one finds reprehensible is so objectionable, then most of our commercial acts will also be. Indeed, I oughtn't to pay taxes for I would hazard a guess that more than $0.0045 of my money has paid for wars I regard as unjust (even if they didn't cause undue civilian casualties). If you've ever given to either of the major political parties or supported them in any way, I can guarantee you've motivated at least $0.0045 worth of harm toward some cause you care about. I do not think this is about the amount of money or the support of causes one finds reprehensible, however. It's about a notion of personal purity that requires one to refuse to give even a half-cent to an artist who's produced art he enjoys, because the artist himself is considered unfit. Even checking a book out written by such a person would besmirch such personal purity.

You seem to be missing a rather large point

Yes, frequently. The condition of man, etc. etc...

the bartender is unlikely to use his position to promote his views in the way that Card can.

Indeed, it would be hard for a bartender, qua bartender, to do so. Bartenders have a relatively small audience and people mostly don't go to a bar with political questions in mind that don't involve artificial turf. If a bartender were an ardent follower of Fred Phelps and using his time at the bar preaching against homosexuals, then, as others have noted, he would be doing his job as bartender. If this is the case, then by no means ought one to get paid for work he doesn't do. Likewise, our evangelical would be justified in withhold payment if the barista informed him he didn't serve people who walk around with WWJD bracelets on. The barista, qua barista, is failing at his job.

When you speak of the bartender 'using his position' and the artist 'using his position', however, two different things seem to be going on. When the bartender uses his position as bartender to oppose homosexuality, he hangs a flag in the bar. When an artist uses his position as an artist to oppose homosexuality, he does not do so by acting as a board member of an anti-SSM advocacy group. Rather the artist, qua artist, creates anti-homosexual art. Anyone pro-SSM would rightly regard this art in the same way as a bar with such a flag hanging in it. But GP does not complain that the art is anti-homosexual. Indeed, as far as I'm familiar with OSC's art, he treats homosexuals as sympathetically as any other characters and, given his politics, his inclusion of homosexuals is a credit to his tolerance that his detractors here have not recognized. I think you're quite right, therefore, that GP has deemed the person of OSC unfit for payment.

The analogy, therefore, is not between OSC and a bartender who hangs dehumanizing flags in his bar, but between OSC and a bartender who treats gay patrons as decently as straight patrons, but went to Liberty University and gives money to Focus on the Family. Should such a bartender be rejected? I think we should hesitate before we deem a person unfit to receive money for services they provide. Many have made analogies involving neo-Nazis or KKK members or the like, but I think it is telling that they should go so far. OSC, qua citizen and fellow countryman, opposes SSM. This puts him in league with James Dobson, to be sure, but also with most Americans just a few years ago--including our current President.* Popular opinion on SSM has changed quickly, very quickly if how fast these things have developed in the past is any indication. I would suggest that regarding people as unfit to be paid (for the things they do which we otherwise appreciate) just because they're views haven't changed as fast as everyone else's is not without danger of its own bigotry and intolerance. SSM will win the day (polling and demographics SSM to be the de facto victor; but I think we'll all be better off if the side which loses isn't labeled heretic or thoughtcriminal or unfit. If we can do this, maybe we can get around to enjoying art and other aspects of life without everything being politicized.

*Of course, I do not mean to imply that the moral and ethical question is one of popularity. Only to indicate that OSC's views are not so far outside the the mainstream as to merit the kind of abusive comparisons to fringe groups as have been made here. OSC wants to keep the status quo on marriage. The KKK wants to lynch homosexuals. There is a difference.

Re: "would rather not give his money to an artist he doesn't deem fit to receive it."

I would not object if GP thought Ender's Game was homophobic and therefore refused to give money for it. But based on his desire to get the movie through bittorrent, GP thinks Ender's Game is something he'd enjoy. His objection, therefore, isn't to this particular work of art, but strictly to the views of the artist. So you're quite right to say that he doesn't deem the artist fit to receive money.

To make clear my objection to this, I'd ask whether the same attitude ought to be applied in other spheres of life. If you regard the bartender as homophobic, does that mean you wouldn't pay him for beer (since, believing and saying things you consider reprehensible, you've deemed him unfit to receive money)?

Or to put this another way, imagine a different set of circumstances. Imagine an evangelical walking into a Starbucks and buying a coffee. This evangelical receives very good service and is about to give a tip but notices the barista has an earring in his right ear. What would we think of this evangelical if he did not then give the tip because he regarded the barista as unfit to receive it? (Mind, I'm not trying to say all evangelicals would do such a thing--some undoubtedly would but most are just ordinary folks like the rest of us.) Is it anyway to participate in a society, not to distinguish between a worker and his work when the work is not what we find reprehensible?