Kids Should Be Free to Read Books With Gay Characters

Silas House’s Southernmost and spiritual liberation

This morning I read this unsettling story from Fay Wylde. When Moms for Suppression goes after Anne Frank, the world doesn’t just tilt, it flips and for many of us, it will never be set right again.

Though it’s now a risk to bring any book to the public eye that doesn’t conform to traditional binary notions, I have to write about the joy, the liberation, and the spiritual freedom I find in author Silas House’s 2018 novel Southernmost (Algonquin Paperbacks).

House has been publishing mainly Appalachian-set fiction for over twenty years — the same length of time, approximately, that he’s been married to his husband Jason and been raising their two daughters, Olivia and Cheyenne. Not too long ago, I wrote about one of his earlier works, Clay’s Quilt, part of a trilogy that involves faded love and old-style music.

I try not to deal in superlatives, because we all like what we like, but Southernmost hit me so hard that I don’t know yet where I’m standing, except that I want to face the demons of book banning and say that I defend the right of each of us to read what we want to read, love whom we want to love, and ask forgiveness when we transgress, which we’re bound to do.

Yes, there are books that are more appropriate for certain older ages to read, but who defines age and “appropriate?” I want to assure everyone that I do not advocate teaching children works with explicit sex and violence, but then, that’s not truly the issue with the books and curricula under siege — it’s just a smokescreen for those who wish to suppress authors, literature, and voices that do not conform to the heterosexual orthodoxy, or to be honest, to fundamentalist religion.

So what does Silas House bring that would be controversial, other than his being in a long-term marriage to another man?

For me, he brings a deep spirituality and a questioning, for seemingly the ten-millionth time, of why so-called committed Christians continue to judge others even when they’re admonished not to by their own Biblical scripture? The caveat of “hate the sin not the sinner” only means, for me, that HATE is involved and is the word everyone sees/hears.

In Southernmost, Asher Sharp is a fundamentalist preacher who has abandoned and dismissed his older brother Luke, because Luke came out as gay. It was actually Asher and Luke’s mother who did the banishing, but Asher was too weak and conformist to buck her even though he loved and admired his brother dearly. After a devastating rain and flood in their mountain community, Asher, with a now deeper sensitivity and understanding of the ways disaster is the great equalizer, attempts to welcome a gay couple into his home for refuge. Asher’s nine-year old son Justin is actually the one who brings the couple to Asher.

But while Asher attempts to make amends for abandoning his brother through this act, his wife Lydia is having none of it. Lydia worries that Justin will see these two men lying together, and such a sight will cause Justin to…what? Get the idea that love is love, no matter what the gender? Will want to “turn gay” himself? Will have too many questions that neither Lydia nor God can satisfactorily answer?

So Asher caves again and as kindly as he can muster, he tells the men they’ll have to leave. While he directs them to another safe place, and while one of the couple still treats Asher kindly, the other man and Asher himself know that hypocrisy once again trumps love and spiritual truth.

This decision causes the final rift in Asher and Lydia’s marriage, and soon, Asher makes a decision to face his wife and his own congregation with the acts of injustice they’ve all entered by judging and denying sanctuary to God’s children.

Of course, the church votes Asher out as its pastor; of course, Asher and Lydia divorce; and of course, Lydia sues and gets full custody of Justin.

And perhaps, “of course” is the right term for Asher’s next act: “kidnapping” Justin and driving to Key West, FL, in search of his lost brother Luke.

That’s all the plot I want to divulge, except to say that the novel contains a part that does the most damage to my soul: it introduces a dog, or at least the memory of one — a good buddy whose presence haunts Asher, Justin, and me. Another dog will find this pair, or trio if you count me, and please don’t worry: this good buddy, “Shady,” will be fine.

I truly think that middle schoolers on up could enjoy this novel and benefit from reading about its spiritual complexity, the sense of being both lost and found. I know I did, and while you might say,

“Well, you’re a mature adult (and thanks for the “mature” part); you can handle this sensitive topic,”

I would respond,

“A kid needs to see that to struggle is to live, and if you read this novel deeply, sensitively, and with as open a mind as possible, you’ll see that, as scripture also tells us,

A child will lead the way.

Yesterday, in an online discussion I was in with some music-loving friends, we discussed our feelings about school and church choirs. My friend Charles and I were both in church choirs, and while neither of us feels religious, we both count that experience as one of the most spiritual things we’ve known.

Singing in our church choir as a teenager made me feel part of something I couldn’t name then and am not sure I can name now. It felt like chanting the universal “OM” that I would know only decades later when I started practicing yoga/meditation. These old songs (“The Church in the Wildwood,” perhaps my favorite), the way we looked out from our loft at those who believed and likely, those who doubted but were in need of some comfort:

“No place is as dear to my childhood…”

I needed comfort, too, even if the church also haunted me with its segregated practices and its periodic practice of judging others.

And then as I was finishing the novel last night, I hit this passage where Asher finds himself in a new church, thinking about those he’s actually harmed:

“Another man appears up front and sits at the organ where he plays ‘Wondrous Love,’ one of Asher’s favorite songs…Asher can feel the vibrations of the organ in the wooden seat of the pew even though they are far in the back of the church, and this sensation is so large to him that he feels the music has become God and God has spread through every part of the church, even into the floor. When the choir rises — he hasn’t even noticed them until they stand — to sing the words, Asher thinks he might not make it through the entire song without breaking down…Asher realizes that everyone in the pews is standing and singing, too. When people lift their voices at the same time, when they join together to pray, God pauses. That’s what Asher believes “ (285).

There is more to this moment, but I hope you’ll discover what he means on your own. You don’t have to agree with Asher; I don’t agree totally either, but I feel this moment, whether I believe or not.

Last night I was also having trouble again watching my dog Max hobble with his arthritic front leg. Max is nine and in good health otherwise. But it’s hard, this life, especially facing the end. So after I cried about the future and hugged Max so many times that he surely wondered about me, which he might do often anyway, I found another passage from Southernmost that, if I believed in coincidences, would stop me cold (truthfully, it did anyway).

SPOILER ALERT

As Asher, Justin, Luke — who affirms that he is a “child of god” bearing a “fire inside him” that nobody could ever put out (298) — and Shady head back “home” to the Tennessee mountains, that child again, Justin, looks out the window:

“Justin watches the trees, his eyes glazed over with sadness so that Asher can almost read his mind. Shady sits in the back seat, watching the road with his whitish-blue eyes, so good, such a peaceful presence traveling with them, like God resting his hand over the Jeep as they head into the unknown” (322).

If I hadn’t already cried that evening…

And then, this, also from Justin:

“When they lived in Key West Justin thought the Everything lived in the ocean. Sometimes he thought the ocean was God. But if the Everything lives anywhere, it’s in the river. Because the river moves along and touches every little thing on its way…The ocean is always moving and noisy. The sky’s always changing. But rivers are always there, even when the water has moved on. You’ve got to find the Everything wherever you are. That’s what Justin believes. And that’s why God is the Everything, because there is God in oceans and rivers and dogs and little boys. In Evonas and Lydias and Bells and Ashers and Lukes. In iguanas and frangipani and bougainvillea” (332–3).

I was a little boy once and I had several dogs. If God is anywhere, he or she or it is in my dog Max, and in my dogs Sandy, and Donald, and Pat.

That’s what I believe, too, Justin.

And so I wonder why anyone would want to ban such books without ever reading, knowing them; and why they want to keep all others from the experience of knowing you, Justin, and Shady, and Roscoe, and all the love and healing you bring to this old world: and especially to your parents, to your Uncle Luke, to your dogs, and to those who want to love and be loved, without judgment, banishment, and fear of some human’s unfounded charge of eternal damnation?

Thanks to Prism and Pen for publishing.