Nathan Pyle is the creator of a comic called Strange Planet, in which blobby aliens do regular people stuff and describe it in unusual ways. It’s gentle and amusing and, until very recently, utterly uncontroversial. The comics are simple and shareable and Instagram-ready and Mr. Pyle has amassed a substantial social media following on both his professional and personal accounts. He shares his drawings. He offers to sell you t-shirts and iPhone covers. There are occasional glimpses of his family, but his captions are almost nonexistent. His personal profile notes that he follows Jesus, but otherwise his focus is clearly on sharing his work, rather than his opinions.
But THEN, gasp, someone discovered that in 2017, he retweeted his then-girlfriend’s tweet from the March for Life and expressed happiness that she had been born. Said person retweeted the old tweet, so did many thousand other people.
His feeds were suddenly filled with shock and condemnation from pro-abortion-types, and articles were written encouraging people to stop sharing his comics, because how DARE he have an unpopular opinion.
My facebook feed, on the other hand, was filled with anti-abortion-types pointing out how ridiculous it is that so many people would turn their back on something they enjoy and/or would attempt to damage someone’s ability to make a living because of a difference of opinion on something unrelated to the work.
I agree with their point entirely. Buuuuuut . . . where do we think those guys learned that?
It seems to me that people who are against abortion are awfully vocal about refusing to interact with or do business with people and companies reported to support abortion.
I've never been a fan of the tactic. In 2015, I wrote this :
Four Reasons I’m NOT Boycotting the Forty Companies on that List
I was sitting down to write basically that exact post again, when I remembered I had already written it. And made a cute little graphic for it and everything. So, take a sec and click over there and save me some time.
For the record, and as usual, neither side seems as interested in getting it right as they are in getting it fast and frantic.
I just do not believe that boycotting and/or trying to DESTROY people with whom I have a difference of opinion — even on something really important — is a good tactic.
We Christians are again missionaries in a pagan land. We could be the ones to set the example online and in real life of charitable discourse and of friendship in the face of opposing viewpoints and of knocking it off with all the punitive boycotting already.
And we could agree to enjoy the silly comics . . . together. And someday we might get the chance to have a conversation about the important stuff. But maybe that's just a dream imaginary pleasant nonsense.
