The LGBTQ Community Inquiry

            How is the LGBTQ community being treated and represented compared to those who are straight? That was our group's most recent reading inquiry. This topic was chosen because there are many books about this, and the way the LGBTQ community is portrayed in the books are very similar to the way they are in real life. Throughout this reading inquiry, I've read the following books that connected to this topic: The Help by Kathryn Stockett, and Luna by Julie Anne Peters. These books really show the dark side of how LGBTQ people are treated.

            In The Help, there was a very small part about people the maids worked for. When a boy started playing with girl toys, his father tried to "beat the girl out of him" with a belt. This showed that people didn't, and some still don't, accept people doing things that really highlighted the opposite gender, especially not in the 1960s. Luna was about the Re, the main character, who has a brother that is transgender. A lot of times, Liam has this really strong temptation to show who he really is, and people who don't understand him would think he was gay because he was a boy who crossed to the girl's boundaries. There was this one part in the book when Liam said that people expect you to live up to the gender that you are born to, meaning that if you are born a boy, you are expected to do manly things. When his dad found out about the truth, he told Liam that he can either act like "normal," or leave his house. This book takes place in the present day, and you can still see how a lot people still don't accept the LGBTQ community.

           In these two books, I realized (although it was shared in our table {ahem, Cloe}), the LGBTQ community is often not accepted by their parents. As you can see in The Help, the father beat his son because he was doing feminine things, things that "he shouldn't have been doing." In Luna, you can see how the father had wanted to kick him out of the house if Liam continued being transgender. In these two cases, both parents are trying to force changes onto their children. These are real world issues that happen today in this world. Even though LGBTQ people are more widely accepted, they are still considered "different" from everyone else, and are often bullied, and harshly criticized.