Indeed, this sort of American Puritanism that equates the smallest discussion of sexuality with pornography is more than just problematic.

It says that any work that touches on sexual matters is suspect and should be kept at arm’s length, even though we humans are sexual beings who naturally wish to express that in our art.

Branding all art that contain sexuality as pornographic doesn’t just force us to hide our art. It forces us to hide ourselves.

Lawn Boy, like Gender Queer, is a gentle book, filled with touching self discovery and musings about finding happiness in a world that seems determined to deny happiness to people born on the wrong side of the economic/cultural tracks. The protagonist is a young Mexican-American man who lives on an Indian reservation and can’t hold on to a job long enough to put a few quarters together to take his girlfriend out to a cheap diner.

But he doesn’t turn bitter. He observes and describes the world around him with a clear, dispassionate voice — trying to make sense of it.

When he falls in love, utterly unexpectedly and not with his girlfriend, his voice changes to one of gentle wonder, including a description of sex, though not a detailed one by any means.

If that’s unacceptable pornography, then artists everywhere might as well hang up their hats.

And queer people might as well resign ourselves to understanding that depicting us truthfully in fiction is out of bounds.