Disproportionately gay: an alarming trend in youth literature
The way to win over a culture is to capture the minds and hearts of its young people. The gay-rights movement has certainly learned that lesson, which helps explain a current trend in youth literature. Anyone who reads books for teens these days will tell you that portrayals of gay relationships and characters are rapidly increasing. In fact, they’re increasing to the point where they’re all out of proportion to reality. If you know the statistics on rates of homosexuality in the real world, you know that it’s somewhere around three percent, maybe less. Not so in the world of Young Adult fiction ; there, it’s far more pervasive. Book reviewers on the Youth Reads page at our website BreakPoint.org are noticing that the subject is coming up in more and more contemporary teen novels. It doesn’t matter if they’re romances or fantasy novels or any other genre—the theme runs through all kinds of books for this age group. Acclaimed author Rainbow Rowell is just one promi...