Where Is the LGBT To Kill a Mockingbird?

Fifty years ago this week the world met Scout and Atticus Finch, the heroes of Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, her classic novel about prejudice, justice, and humanity in the American South. The book became a bestseller soon after it was published in 1960, won a Pulitzer Prize in 1961, and earned Gregory Peck an Academy Award for his portrayal of Atticus Finch in 1962. Thinking about the book now, however, I have to ask myself: Where is its LGBT equivalent?

I first read To Kill a Mockingbird as a young teen. No other book had made me realize the extent of racial prejudice in the modern era. I was familiar with bias of other sorts — I was a feminist born and bred, and as one of only three Jewish families in my public school (however non-observant we were), I was keenly aware of a skew toward Christianity in almost all classroom observances. I was aware of racial prejudice, but nothing brought home its impact — and its pervasiveness into public institutions — like To Kill a Mockingbird.

I was also, I admit, entranced with its tomboy heroine Scout, but that was for reasons I wouldn’t figure out for a number of years.

When President George W. Bush bestowed the Presidential Medal of Freedom on Harper Lee in 2007, the citation for her award read, “At a critical moment in our history, To Kill a Mockingbird helped focus the nation on the turbulent struggle for equality.”

It strikes me that the LGBT community needs a similar book to help focus our nation right now. I can think of no better argument for this than the one made by President Bush in his remarks at Lee’s Medal of Freedom ceremony. He noted, “Soon after its publication a reviewer said this: ‘A hundred pounds of sermons on tolerance, or an equal measure of invective deploring the lack of it, will weigh far less in the scale of enlightenment than a mere 18 ounces of a new fiction bearing the title To Kill a Mockingbird.’”

We writers, bloggers, and activists are good at sermon and invective. What we need, however, is a writer of Lee’s brilliance to coat the message in compelling prose and slip it into the American consciousness.

There has been no shortage of excellent LGBT-themed books or LGBT writers, including Lee’s friend Truman Capote. And organizations such as Lambda Literary continue to support and encourage them. Somehow, however, none have yet captured an audience with a book about anti-LGBT prejudice to the extent that Lee did with a book about racial prejudice. Tony Kushner’s Pulitzer and Tony Award-winning play, Angels In America, has perhaps come closest — but I would argue that its fan base and influence are still not as wide as that of To Kill a Mockingbird.

President Bush said of Lee's book, “To Kill a Mockingbird has influenced the character of our country for the better. It's been a gift to the entire world. As a model of good writing and humane sensibility, this book will be read and studied forever.”

What do you think? Are there any LGBT-themed books about which you could say the same? If not, what plot or setting do you think might serve that purpose? Can an LGBT-themed book have that kind of influence right now, or is our society still not ready for it?

Photo credit: President George W. Bush awards the Presidential Medal of Freedom to author Harper Lee. White House photo by Eric Draper