meet Shaun David Hutchinson

This post is connected to my last post on re-imagining the family (and thanks to KT Horning who posted this link on Facebook).  Shaun has a new book (The Deathday Letter) coming out in June, but for now, stop by his blog and read his three great posts about YA & Sexuality. I love the first line of this excerpt (my emphasis):

And we all have a part to play. Readers can demand more books with LGBT characters.  Writers can include them in their books.  And it doesn’t have to be some huge declarative thing.  But that wouldn’t be so bad either.  I’d also like to see more books with LGBT protagonists where the story is about anything other than them being gay.  Would Harry Potter have been any less awesome if Harry had hooked up with one of Ron’s brothers instead of Ron’s sister?  Just like with color and race, the more representative characters are of the types of people that there are in the real world, the better they’re going to be.