I think Levithan is spot-on, especially with this statement: “Because, at the most basic level, what LGBT people are being asked (absurdly) is to prove that we are as much human beings as anyone else. We know this is true. And slowly but surely, other people are realizing it’s true. By getting to know us. By talking to us. By hearing or reading our stories.” And a good story is worth hundreds of straightforward attempts to change someone’s mind by facts and arguments.

When we read nonfiction, we tend to read critically, evaluating what we’re told according to what we already believe. But when we read fiction, we can (if it’s well-told) immerse ourselves in the story and empathize with the characters: we care what happens to these people, and we understand some of what they’re thinking and feeling. We can’t help seeing them as people, just as human as we are.

There’s another point he (as well as the article writer) made which I think is very important: “he went on to explain the progression of queer YA fiction throughout the past decades as going from ‘death, then death of your dog — dogs would die when you were making out with somebody in the 70s… — and then there was misery.'” A pretty significant proportion (maybe even most?) of LGBT+ lit, especially YA lit, right now is coming out stories and tragedies. (Or both.) There’s value in those stories, but the spread of plots really needs to be expanded.

LGBT historical fiction, mysteries, action-adventure stories, fantasy, science fiction, cheesy romantic comedies, epic quest stories… Gay spaceship captains zooming between planets, lesbian detectives falling in love while untangling thrilling murder mysteries, bisexual knights going on continent-spanning quests to save the world, asexual pirates crossing oceans full of mythical dangers, trans* royals and rebels duking it out over the fate of kingdoms, aromantic engineers solving problems and building communities on supposedly uninhabitable planets and moons!

The thing about fiction is that it is full of possibilities: you can never run out of stories to tell, and readers need to see characters like them–or unlike them–in more than just literary realism settings. And it’s hardly fair to restrict time travel, space travel, and fantastic worlds of every kind to straight people.