Green Lantern

Now, I know that this might not seem like the right place to talk about it, but if you think for a little while, you'll see two obvious connections: comic books are literature, and my own stories often include gay characters. (Don't forget that in the beginning I divided the stories exactly based on the gay/straight division.)

The thing is that I read some interesting news today, namely that the DC Comics superhero Green Lantern is announced gay.

Apparently in the older, original versions Green Lantern had a gay son, Obsidian. This, I believe, is already good, but might obviously not have the same influence. In the new project the company is working on now, "Earth 2", they have made the character younger again, which also meant that they had to drop the gay son. The writers wanted to keep the homosexual element in the story, though, and decided to make Green Lantern himself gay.

There has been other gay superheroes, apparently, but probably those have fallen into oblivion. The same writer who is responsible for the new Green Lantern comics, James Robinson, worked on the gay 'Starman' superhero in the 90s. Now the idea is important, because our reality has changed. It is important to change the reality of the comics as well, since it affects many of the young people who read them. Robinson says:

"I hope he's a positive figure. If there's some kind of kid out there who's reading the comic and who's worried about the person he is, maybe it will give him a positive sense of who he is. Or maybe a different kid will read it and decide I don't need to bully some kind of kid in school."

 Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/national/dc_comics_green_lantern_to_be_revealed_Yt2uNktuzmrrWSbkIRIDbO#ixzz1wjLNjCHu

I personally think this is exactly right. At least when I was young, comics still had a great effect on kids, and I assume it is still so. Why not take advantage of this and try to shape their minds to something more positive on the while, like love and tolerance? I mean yes, of course, there will most likely be a wave of criticism from angry people claiming that the comic is now turning young proper boys gay. All I would say to them, though, is that nothing turns people gay, people are born that way. And if the parents wouldn't allow their children to show that sort of side of themselves, well good luck raising them well while having a big part of who they truly are completely suppressed.