Every month at our local library, I pick up a copy of BookPage: Discover Your Next Great Book. As a reader and an author, I like to peruse the recommendations, study the book covers, and see what’s new in the publishing world. I take special note of Christian books, books for young adults, and books for children.
In the May 2019 issue, the words “coming of age” caught my eye. After all, I’ve written a coming-of-age story. In the LGBTQ stories spotlight column, two books are featured in “Coming-of-age while out and proud:” How (Not) to Ask a Boy to Prom by S.J. Goslee and Kings, Queens, and In-Between by Tanya Boteju.
The June 2019 issue includes a feature on YA summer reading entitled “Find your summer fling.” Two of the five featured books are LGBTQ romances. Hot Dog Girl by Jennifer Dugan is a “sparkling summer romance” involving bisexual teen Elouise. Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up with Me by Mariko Tamaki follows Frederica’s on-again, off-again relationship with her cheating girlfriend. A visit to a psychic results in her trying to get out of the toxic relationship.
It comes as no surprise that with the legalization of same-sex marriage, implicit endorsement of LGBTQ relationships and lifestyles have proliferated in all forms of entertainment media, including books, aimed at not only adults but young adults, school-age children, and preschoolers.
Catholic parents can no longer take for granted that entertainment aimed at their children, whatever their age, will reinforce centuries of worldwide belief that acknowledged the primacy and importance of the traditional family including marriage between one man and one woman.
While we do our best to form our children in values and virtues, we cannot safeguard them from everything contrary to those values. (We were shocked when visiting Boston during LGBT Pride Month to find a historical building draped in a rainbow flag and period costumed-guides with gay pride pins affixed to their tricorn hats.)
As our children mature, we want them to be savvy about the world, living in it while not being of it. Whether at school, in the workplace, or in their own families, they will come to know men and women with same-sex attraction. How can we help them to hold fast to the truth about human sexuality and the consequences of choices and lifestyles that are contrary to that truth while continuing to love and respect those for whom this truth is a challenge? How can we help them to understand the rightness God's plan for man and woman in a culture that denigrates such belief?
It's safe to assume that books marketed and recommended to your young adult may likely include values that are contrary to what they have been taught in the home or in church. Be prepared to discuss those books and their contents. And be ready with books you know do uphold your shared values.
If you're unsure how to broach these sensitive topics or don't feel up to the task of defending the Church's teaching, I recommend reading Made This Way: How to Prepare Kids to Face Today's Tough Moral Issues by Leila Miller and Trent Horn (Catholic Answers Publishing). Made This Way is a tremendous resource that employs plain language, the natural law, Church teaching, and common sense to establish simple talking points for laying the foundation for children's and teens' understanding and acceptance of the Church's (unpopular, but correct) stances on topics such as transgender identity, homosexuality, and more.
Fiction can be as effective or more effective than nonfiction in reaching hearts and minds. Theresa Linden’s Roland West, Outcast includes a main character with same-sex attraction whose differences aren’t swept under the rug and whose person isn’t demeaned. But neither does the book shy from including characters willing to stand up for what they believe about true, good, and beautiful human sexuality.
Similarly, Corinna Turner’s popular I Am Margret dystopian series includes a character, a Vatican Secret Service Agent, who though attracted to members of the same sex, is renowned for his chastity and self-control, earning him the nickname Unicorn. (Unicorn is introduced in Book 3, Liberation.) The character hasn't built his identity around being "gay," but rather sees his attraction to members of the same sex as being his particular cross.
In Theresa Linden's dystopian Liberty series, the end result of a culture that has ignored God's plan for human sexuality is depicted through the lens of a young woman, Liberty, rebelling against being assigned as a "breeder." In a totalitarian society where sexuality has been entirely separated from procreation, the family has been dissolved--except in an underground society preserving it.
To find these novels and others aimed at teens that include themes that uphold rather than undermine Church teaching, I recommend visiting
www.catholicteenbooks.com. I doubt I'll ever find these books featured in an industry tabloid like
BookPage, but I"m grateful, for my own children's sakes, that they are readily available.
