I know, right? None of you would EVER have expected this from me! Ever! In a million years! I mean, I keep my support of queer books firmly to myself most of the time, so–

Yeah, okay, let’s move on.

For those of you who don’t know what I’m talking about, check out this post at Publishers Weekly. Short version: Two authors co-wrote a book. The book has five point of view characters. One of these characters is gay and has a same-gender relationship. They get a big-time agent (still unidentified) interested in representing their work… on the condition that they either remove the gay PoV or make the character straight. (They had permission to have him come out of the closet in a sequel, though. Yay?)

I’m guessing y’all know why that’s unacceptable, so I won’t linger on that. Basically, just read the post, especially the advice near the end, and browse the comments. This is not an isolated occurrence. (The kerfuffle earlier this year surrounding Jessica Verday’s short story made that abundantly clear.)

One point I did want to make–and something I’ve seen most people echo, thankfully–is that the agent’s reasons for requesting these changes don’t matter. Whatever her personal biases or lack thereof, requesting a change like this contributes to the marginalization of an already underrepresented group.

However, not everyone agrees. I’ve seen these arguments mentioned in defense of the agent, or in disagreement with all the outrage spreading in the Twittersphere:

* It’s an editing decision. Agents should be allowed to edit/make suggestions. YES, that’s true. Maybe the agent thought five characters was too many, was bogging down the story, or the gay character’s PoV added nothing new to the story. This entire argument is invalid given the current situation. Obviously, this decision was about the character’s gayness, or she wouldn’t have presented straightening him out as an option. In general, though, I think such arguments only hold water if they’re backed up by those reasons (“remove this PoV or it won’t sell” vs “it drags down the pacing for such and such reason”). I’ve seen various authors mention that they had such criticisms on their queer-themed novels and none of them blamed the agents for homophobia. This isn’t an argument people are making, so there’s no reason to, er, argue it.

If there’s a sensible editorial reason for “make the character straight instead of gay”, I’d love to hear it. Like agent Sarah LaPolla pointed out: When would sexual orientation ever “not work?” Does a character’s straightness ever get in the way of plot?

Yes, if an inordinate amount of time is spent on the character’s relationship or coming out or dealing with homophobia or whatever, and it takes away from the meat of the story, that’s a valid editorial comment. Those could go for straight characters just as well. Again, that’s not what we’re arguing here. 

* It’s a marketing decision. Queer romances don’t sell as well as straight romances. She just wanted to increase the potential audience. But that’s not the book that’s written. By that logic you should never write a niche book because hey! It could have more commercial appeal!

The last thing we need is to shove queer characters back into hiding. People can’t buy these books if they don’t exist. How can we ever expect queer characters to be commonly accepted–especially as PoV characters–if they’re never let past the gatekeepers?

* This is just a fluke. Most agents and editors are completely open to queer content. For a perfect take-down of this argument, I’d like to direct you to this post by Rick Lipman, who writes about how it’s a sign of remarkable privilege just how many people are shocked by this.

Also, Robin Talley points out how this probably happens way more often than we hear, it’s just often invisible. She also speculates on the difference between queerness in contemporary and SF/F novels.

Lastly, Rachel Manija Brown, one of the authors of the novel that caused all this, compiled a list of queer characters in SF/F YA, with commentary. I definitely need to check out some of these.

And I also need to get back to writing BLINK so it can join that list one day. Front-and-center lesbian romance FTW!