Better, but There's Still a Long Way to Go

This week’s Savage Love struck a chord with me. (Why am I mentioning a sex advice column in a blog that’s largely about books for young people? Bear with me.) The column, “How to Cope in the Closet,” features three letters by gay teens and serves as a reminder that as much as things on average are improving for queer youth in America in terms of support and acceptance, there’s such a long way to go.

In the first letter, a lesbian in high school who since coming out has dealt with daily harassment and ostracization by her peers and the unresponsiveness of school staff. Or the second letter, by a gay boy from an evangelical Christian family who, since being caught with gay porn on his computer, has been interrogated nightly by his parents about whether he has a girlfriend yet. Even the final letter, by a gay boy now out to his supportive family, is sadly telling; he and his boyfriend were too scared to come out until they were caught making out by his parents.

These aren’t the worst stories you’ll ever hear, of course—to quote the girl in the first letter, “nothing too terrible, no physical violence.” What they are is typical stories. Par for the course.

I’m always agog when I encounter adults in their 20s and 30s who claim they went to a high school where “no one batted an eye” at kids who were queer or suspected of it. These adults are never queer themselves, so I’ll excuse a little naïveté, but still I wonder what planet they’re from. At my high school, in the mid-1990s, if no one was harassed or bashed (yeah, right), it was for the simple reason that nobody was out.

At that time, in my county there was no in-school support for queer and questioning teens, besides talking to a guidance counselor (whose quality varied). The only non-university support group in the area was hosted by the lesbian and gay resource center downtown. Kids regularly came from 20 miles away, and sometimes it was more like 50.

Since that time, brave kids at my hometown high schools have started gay-straight alliances, which I’m sure has done wonders for the climate. But this was in a fairly cosmopolitan city, for its size. What about all the places in America that, twelve years later, are still without a lesbian and gay resource center with 50 or even 100 miles, much less a GSA in every high school?

Where am I going with this? Well, I believe positive books about being GLBTQ are probably the closest thing to a universal support system available to queer youth in America. (Yes, there’s the Internet. The Internet is fantastic. But it’s as easy to find the wrong stuff as the right—maybe easier.) I say this because public libraries, assuming they’re conforming to the Library Bill of Rights , make these books available to any person in the community, for free, anonymously. These books will never make up for or excuse a negative climate for Q&Q kids, but they offer solidarity, reassurance, information, and hope.

Now, one thing that bothers me about the children’s book industry is the way sexual orientation and gender identity (“alternative,” that is) are still overwhelmingly treated as illicit topics for mature readers only—like sexual intercourse or drugs and alcohol. I say illicit because for the most part you only see these topics treated in books marketed for high schoolers. One industry professional told me coming out novels are overdone, yet said in the same breath that sexual orientation isn’t an appropriate topic for a middle grade novel. To which I can only respond: you’re wrong.

Coming to terms with being straight, gay, bisexual, trans, fill-in-the-blank starts long before puberty hits, whether you’re conscious of it at the time or not. No sexual/gender identity is illegal. It isn’t a disease or psychological disorder. And (going out on a crazy liberal limb here, I know) it’s not a sin to live your life with honesty and dignity. If children’s book professionals support this view and want to do their bit to improve the social climate for Q&Q youth, they need to shake off the notion that high school is the right time to start talking about it. High school is too late. “Better late than never,” yes, but too late just the same.

Three notable middle grade exceptions to the trend are James Howe’s Totally Joe, Alex Sanchez’s So Hard to Say, and Lisa Jahn-Clough’s Country Girl, City Girl, each of which has middle school age characters coming to terms with sexual orientation. These books make concrete what ought to be obvious: that middle grade books with queer characters aren’t any more illicit than Jenny Han’s Shug, Jerry Spinelli’s Love, Stargirl, or the slew of other books for that age group that include a chaste boy-girl kiss.

Off the soapbox for now. Let me take the opportunity to link to some of my favorite websites to learn about GLTBQ books for young people.

Worth the Trip - Uber-librarian KT Horning blogs about youth books new and old with GLTBQ characters and/or themes.

I’m Here, I’m Queer, What the Hell Do I Read? - Writer Lee Wind posts GLTBQ book blurbs as well as blogging about various other queer media issues.

Great Gay Books for Teens - An annotated bibliography by authors Alex Sanchez and James Howe.

ETA, 3/25/08: In my list of middle grade GLBTQ books, I somehow managed to forget David LaRochelle's Absolutely, Positively Not. The main character is in high school, but the book, which is laugh-out-loud funny, definitely speaks to a younger audience as well. Has there ever been another queer book to win the Sid Fleischman Humor Award?!