Can you be a good author and a terrible person?

I've been reading my way through Fountainhead and while it's certainly not a book that'll be added to me top ten list, I can at least appreciate it as well-written. So far, at least. Anyway, I finished Anthem some years ago and remember enjoying it. So, with that being said, Ayn Rand as a person was uh… controversial to say the least. Between Objectivism and McCarthyism, she really wasn't a shining star of a human being.

I found myself thinking something similar recently. I read Journey to the End of the Night by Louis-Ferdinand Céline and I thought it was fantastic. Only after did I go on to find out he was a Nazi sympathizer. Yikes. But also, contextually, not the most wild thing to see back in the 1930s. Makes me not recommend him anymore, even though I look back on the book and think about how I enjoyed it almost as much as Blood Meridian. The language and prose were stunning. At least that's my opinion.

I know other people have expressed similar sentiments with certain writers who vocalize their social and political views, whether it be J.K. Rowling, Colleen Hoover or Brandon Sanderson. So, what I'm wondering is where you draw the line in the sand. When does an authors personal beliefs make them a taboo? Obviously there's differences in opinion, and that line in the sand varies from person to person, but I wanted to know how others felt about this.

Are there books, authors, etc. that you simply have turned away over an incident? Do you feel like an author's comments are sometimes forgiven because their books are just that good, or their fame has given them some leeway? Maybe the opposite where things are blown out of proportion? As I write this I think about the variety of authors on my shelf who have received at least some judgement or ridicule for their beliefs. Some justified, others a bit over the top for what actually occurred.

Do you think years and years from now, many of the books we enjoyed or accepted as classics, will be looked at with a more scrutinous eye, and the pool of books considered praise worthy will be a fraction of what it was?