A couple days ago I was reading a story on the gamer site Kotaku about the latest controversy in the war between the anti-gay brigade and EA Games. The AllOut petition, which I posted about on Sunday, had been hacked by spambots, and the accusations that EA Games were behind this started to fly – although, of course, there is no evidence to back this up. AllOut have now had to close down the petition and sort out the spam from the legitimate signatures.

In talking about the petition, which supports the plan to include same-sex romance options in Star Wars: The Old Republic, and Mass Effect 3,  Andre Banks from AllOut addressed the accusation that EA Games had been using the controversy as a PR stunt, and concluded, “a lot of people are missing the real story here – the Family Research Council, a notorious anti-gay group, is telling this company, and many others, that gay people have no place in our games, in our media and in our lives.”

There were a few comments pointing out the bad reputation of EA Games in response to Polari‘s article on the petition. That is fair enough, and it should be part of the dialogue. There is a certain amount of contention about the company’s business practices. That, however, is not the real story here. The story is about how organisations like the Family Research Council, the Florida Family Association, and the American Decency Association are fighting to take away LGBT rights. Of course EA Games will benefit from people standing up against these groups, but that has to be a better alternative than backing off and letting organised hate groups win this fight.