“Family Values” Groups Launch Email Campaign Against BioWare

Two more “family values” groups in the U.S. have launched an email campaign against BioWare, calling on the studio to keep same-sex relationships out of Star Wars: The Old Republic.

Here’s what I remember about Star Wars: Darth Vader crushes a guy’s throat with one hand. Luke Skywalker discovers the butchered and burned remains of his family, killed by a fascist military and left to rot in the sun. Ben Kenobi gets into a bar fight and chops a dude’s arm off. Han Solo murders a guy. And that’s the first 15 minutes! Things only go downhill from there, like when the Empire blows up an entire planet just to make a point.

But the Florida Family Association and the American Decency Association have other things on their mind. They’re concerned that BioWare is exposing kids to same-sex relationships in Star Wars: The Old Republic, and they’re calling upon their followers and other like-minded Americans to join them in an email campaign demanding that it stop.

A form letter asking BioWare to stop “impacting our children” is up now on the Florida Family Association website. “American families grew up with the Star Wars film series that was family fare. The films contained no profanity, no nudity and no sexual situations,” it says. “It makes no sense that BioWare and Electronic Arts would shatter that family quality in Star Wars videogames just to pacify 35 LGBT polling participants and appease extremists.”

“Star Wars videogames are for children. An overwhelming percentage of the 1.7 million games sold are being used by children who do not need to be exposed to this propaganda,” it continues. “Please stick to your policy to avoid such advocacy representations in your games.”

I’m not sure who these “extremists” are and I could be misunderstanding the reference to “polling participants,” but I’m fairly certain there are more than 35 LGBT gamers signed up for The Old Republic. And as GamePolitics notes, SW:TOR is rated T (Teen), which means that if your eight-year-old kid is playing it, you’re the one screwing things up, not BioWare.

The Florida Family Association is far from the only “family values” group to be upset about same-sex relationships in videogames, or even the first. In January, the president of the Family Research Council took to the airwaves to call the game out for its “homosexual activism.” The Old Republic doesn’t actually support gay and lesbian relationships yet, but BioWare promised last year that it would be added as a “post-launch feature.”

A virtually identical letter is ready to go a the American Decency Association, offering the morally outraged a chance to get twice as mad in half the time.