Sulu is gay and it's no big deal... and that's a big deal!

This moment in Star Trek: Beyond made me absurdly happy. (Screen shots from watching the movie on a recent plane flight.)

Sulu (played by John Cho), hugging his daughter, his proud/happy husband looking on



Captain James T. Kirk, happy for them, looking on



Sulu, holding daughter, with husband's arm around him



Happy two dad family walking away



Hey, and a cute extra!



It's a powerful statement about LGBTQ people being part of the future.

And it's a tribute to George Takei, the original Sulu, now an out gay man himself, who married his husband Brad Altman in 2008.

And it's pretty awesome.

Thanks to everyone who made this happen, including the writing team, the director, the producers, and John Chu, the actor playing Sulu.

Infinite In Between - There's a Gay Love Story In This Tale of Five Teens Going Through Four Years of High School

Infinite In Between by Carolyn Mackler

It was the day before the first day of high school. They wrote those letters to their future selves, hid them in a secret place, and vowed to unearth them at graduation.

As if any of them had a clue what the next four years had in store.

Gregor is quietly, desperately in love with Whitney until a tragedy transforms his world. Zoe is running from everything: her celebrity mom, a public scandal, a long-held family secret and, ultimately, herself. Jake knows what it means that he has a crush on his best friend, Ted; it’s everything else that’s so confusing. Beautiful Whitney seems to have it together, but looks can be deceiving. And then there’s Mia. She watches them all, but doesn’t say a word until it’s almost too late.

Five teens. Fours years. An unforgettable journey.

Add your review of "Infinite In Between" in comments!

UN Free & Equal's New Animated Short Video, "The Lesson"

The video aims to raise awareness of the scale and impact of anti-LGBTIQ bullying and calls on parents, teachers, schools and governments to play their part in stamping it out. Created with children's author Daniel Errico and animation house Kavaleer Productions, the video tells the bittersweet story of a boy whose friendship with a girl becomes problematic when his mother sees her kiss another girl.



Free & Equal is a project of the United Nations Human Rights Office. The campaign raises awareness of homophobic and transphobic violence and discrimination, and promotes greater respect for the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex people everywhere. Find out more here.

Is your LGBTQ kidlit book on the ALA's Rainbow Book List Committee's Radar?

There's a form to let them know about it.

And it doesn't have to be just your book - is there a book by someone else that's been or being published in 2017 that you want to make sure gets the chance to be included on the American Library Association's Rainbow List? Let the committee know!

And we'll all benefit, by having more great LGBTQ kid lit books to recommend and enjoy!

Weird Girl and What's His Name

Weird Girl and What's His Name by Meagan Brothers

In the podunk town of Hawthorne, North Carolina, seventeen-year-old geeks Lula and Rory share everything sci-fi and fantasy fandom, Friday night binge-watching of old "X-Files" episodes, and that feeling that they don t quite fit in. Lula knows she and Rory have no secrets from each other; after all, he came out to her years ago, and she's shared with him her sacred texts: the acting books her mother left behind after she walked out of Lula's life. But then Lula discovers that Rory, her Rory, who maybe she's secretly had feelings for has not only tried out for the Hawthorne football team without telling her, but has also been having an affair with his middle-aged divorcee boss. With their friendship disrupted, Lula begins to question her identity and her own sexual orientation, and she runs away in the middle of the night on a journey to find her mother, who she hopes will have all the answers.

This novel won the IndieFab Young Adult Fiction Book of the Year 2015 and made the Kirkus Reviews Best Teen Books 2015 list. Add your review of "Weird Girl and What's His Name" in comments!

Grace and History: Moonlight is The First LGBTQ Film To Win The Best Picture Oscar

The Oscar awards show last night was loooong, and when La La Land was announced as the winner of Best Picture (3 hours and 38 minutes into the broadcast), I thought the whole thing was over.

It wasn't.

After three speeches, Jordan Horowitz (Producer of La La Land) approached the microphone and said, ""I'm sorry. No. There's a mistake. Moonlight, you guys won Best Picture."

Then he held up the card for the cameras:

In what was truly a moment of grace, Jordan raised the Oscar statuette he had been mistakenly handed, and said,

"I'm going to be really proud to hand this to my friends from Moonlight."

And then the actual winners for Best Picture, the Moonlight team, took the stage, stunned, not sure if they could believe it...

Barry Jenkins (Director and Co-Writer of Moonlight) said:

"There was a time when I thought this movie was impossible."

It's an historic moment - Moonlight is the first LGBTQ film to win the Oscar for best picture.

And when, earlier in the evening, Moonlight won the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay, co-writer Tarell Alvin McCraney dedicated his win

"to all those black and brown boys and girls and non-gender-conforming who don't see themselves" in film.

Grace, and history. Here's the trailer for Moonlight:

Bayard Rustin's words inspire me

With everything going on in the US right now, including the bomb threats at Jewish community centers, the anti-immigrant raids, and now this week's attack on Transgender student rights, these words from the out Gay African American Civil Rights leader are a call to action:

"If we want to do away with the injustice to gays it will not be done because we get rid of the injustice to gays. It will be done because we are forwarding the effort for the elimination of injustice to all." -Bayard Rustin, in a 1986 interview.

Bayard  Rustin in 1965

The Otto Digmore Difference - A New Adult Gay Ex-Boyfriends and now 'just friends?' Road Trip

The Otto Digmore Difference by Brent Hartinger

Otto Digmore is a 26-year-old gay guy with dreams of being a successful actor, and he’s finally getting some attention as a result of his supporting role on a struggling sitcom. But he’s also a burn survivor with scars on half his face, and all indications are that he’s just too different to ever find real Hollywood success.

Now he’s up for an amazing new role that could change everything. Problem is, he and his best friend Russel Middlebrook have to drive all the way across the country in order to get to the audition on time.

It’s hard to say which is worse: the fact that so many things go wrong, or that Russel, an aspiring screenwriter, keeps comparing their experiences to some kind of road trip movie.

There’s also the fact that Otto and Russel were once boyfriends, and Otto is starting to realize that he might still have romantic feelings for his best friend.

Just how far will Otto go to get the role, and maybe the guy, of his dreams?

In an interview about the book, Brent says, "I confess that when I first introduced Otto in 2005 (in The Order of the Poison Oak, the first Geography Club sequel), I was annoyed by the response in some quarters of the literary world. I heard more than once that I shouldn’t be equating being gay with being disabled, because you don’t “choose” to be disabled. Like you choose to be gay?

But the world has changed a lot since then,. The last few years, the topic of “diversity” has finally broken through. It finally seemed like the time to give Otto his own book."

Add your review of "The Otto Digmore Difference" in comments!

Nevertheless, #ShePersisted - by Courtney Privett

This is powerful and so important to share:

Read more about Courtney and the drawing she made with her daughters in mind here.

An Actual "Fake News" Headline...

Glad we could clear that up. You're welcome.

Ian McKellen Performs Shakespeare's Words On Immigration

This is brilliant! (and under six minutes to watch, and hey, it's Ian McKellen!)

And, even though William Shakespeare wrote it more than 400 years ago, it feels so timely...





The light in me recognizes and acknowledges the light in you,
Lee

The Other Boy - Shane is 12, and is a regular boy... who has to find the courage to ignore the transphobic hate directed at him and just be himself

The Other Boy by M.G. Hennessey

Twelve-year-old Shane Woods is just a regular boy. He loves pitching for his baseball team, working on his graphic novel, and hanging out with his best friend, Josh. But Shane is keeping something private, something that might make a difference to his friends and teammates, even Josh. And when a classmate threatens to reveal his secret, Shane’s whole world comes crashing down. It will take a lot of courage for Shane to ignore the hate and show the world that he’s still the same boy he was before. And in the end, those who stand beside him may surprise everyone, including Shane.

Add your review of "The Other Boy" in comments!

If you're at #NY17SCBWI, Join me (and conference faculty guests) for the LGBTQ + Allies Q&A

Saturday February 11, from 8:30pm - 9:30pm (and probably for another half-hour after that), in the Chrysler Room in the Grand Central Hyatt.

Can't wait!

The light in me recognizes and acknowledges the light in you,
Lee

Lily and Dunkin - Two 8th Grade Outsiders Learn To "Let The World See You"

Lily and Dunkin by Donna Gephart

Lily Jo McGrother, born Timothy McGrother, is a girl. But being a girl is not so easy when you look like a boy. Especially when you're in the eighth grade.

Dunkin Dorfman, birth name Norbert Dorfman, is dealing with bipolar disorder and has just moved from the New Jersey town he's called home for the past thirteen years. This would be hard enough, but the fact that he is also hiding from a painful secret makes it even worse.

One summer morning, Lily Jo McGrother meets Dunkin Dorfman, and their lives forever change.

Add your review of "Lily and Dunkin" in comments!

In Challenge, Opportunity: News About My Book, THE QUEER HISTORY PROJECT: NO WAY, THEY WERE GAY?

It needs a new, brave publishing home.

A nonfiction book for kids about men who loved men, women who loved women, and people who lived outside gender boundaries in history was bound to be controversial. Not so much the primary sources, or the facts (all of which have been published for adults before), but the daring to share it with kids.

Daring to share Abraham Lincoln’s letters that reveal his love for Joshua Fry Speed, and the conflict both men felt about the women they would ultimately marry. Including the 1842 letter where Abraham wrote Joshua, “I now have no doubt that it is the peculiar misfortune of both you and me to dream dreams of Elysium [heaven] far exceeding all that anything earthly can realize. Far short of your dreams as you may be, no woman could do more to realize them that that same black-eyed Fanny.”

Daring to share the late 1500s/early 1600s love sonnets William Shakespeare wrote to another man, the mysterious Mr. W. H. Including Sonnet 144, where the Bard wrote, “Two loves I have of comfort and despair, Which like two spirits do suggest me still; The better angel is a man right fair, The worser spirit a woman color’d ill.”

Daring to share the 1911 love contract between Mohandas Gandhi and the man he loved, Hermann Kallenbach, where they pledged “more love and yet more love… such love as, they hope, the world has not seen” between them.

Daring to share the circa 1899 poem Jane Addams wrote about the “delivering love” of Mary Rozet Smith.

Daring to share the letters Eleanor Roosevelt wrote Lorena Hickok, including the 1933 letter where she wrote about wearing Lorena’s diamond and sapphire ring to remind herself, “she does love me, or I wouldn’t be wearing it.”

And daring to share so much more…

To put this book out in the world (and into schools, and libraries, and bookstores, and kids’ hands) requires a publisher that’s going to be behind both it and me 100%.

It has become clear that THE QUEER HISTORY PROJECT: NO WAY, THEY WERE GAY? didn’t have that support at Simon & Schuster, so I’ve taken it back.

Now, my book needs to find a new, brave, and excited-to-share-this-project-with-the-world publishing home.

So these true—and surprising—stories can reach young LGBTQ and Allied readers (and the adults who didn’t get to read this when they were kids!)

So it can change our view of history, our vision of ourselves, and our dreams of what’s possible.

So it can change lives.

Thanks for being with me on the journey.

The Queer History Project: No Way, They Were Gay?
Primary source materials reveal the true—and surprising—stories of men who loved men, women who loved women, and people who lived outside gender boundaries. (Ages 11 and up.)

Representation: Danielle Smith, Lupine Grove Creative

Nine of the featured men who loved men, women who loved women, and people who lived outside gender boundaries in history. How many can you name? How many of their surprising – and true – stories do you know?