man i remember being 13 when I was homophobic/an evangelical young earth creationist lol. I've seen people claim that representation in media isn't important, but I heavily disagree. Years ago, a book series I had been reading ages ago began introducing characters that were not straight, nonbinary, etc, and I saw loads of comments from people who were ecstatic to finally see a character they could relate to. They felt like they were finally no longer invisible to the world. The books treated them with the same validity that anyone else might take for granted.
That is what ultimately broke me out of the conditioning I had been raised with. I eventually realized I was gay myself, and those books helped me to come to terms with it. I wasn't the sinful, lustful, strange, or defective thing that homophobic rhetoric claimed. I was just a normal person, as was anyone else who was LGBTQ+
Sometimes I read reviews for that book series, and see (usually older) people leaving negative ones, saying "this book was great until the author ruined it by shoving woke propaganda into it!" It makes me wonder how I might have turned out if I hadn't changed.
