Nov 02, 2007  |  By: ZACK ROSEN  | COMMENTS     

It’s no secret that a strong, traditional Christian upbringing further complicates the coming out process. In his novel “The God Box,” local author Alex Sanchez tells the story of a closeted Christian teen, whose world view is turned upside down when a gay Christian friend helps him see that those two identities are not mutually exclusive.

“The God Box” is the tale of two Mexican-Americans living in small-town Texas. Paul is a good Christian who studies the Bible, abstains from sex with his girlfriend Angie and has male-oriented sex dreams that he can barely even share with himself. Manuel is the handsome new kid at school who recently moved from Dallas because of his mother’s job. Out, proud and intent on starting a Gay/Straight Alliance at the school, Manuel slowly helps Paul find the courage to be who he really is.

“People always want to know how autobiographical this is,” says Sanchez, who was born in Mexico and grew up in Arlington, Va. “Paul represents the struggle I went through to reconcile my sexuality and my faith, and Manuel is the point I’ve gotten to in terms of having integrated and reconciled that.”

The obstacles Paul faces are many, from disapproving friends to an ill-conceived meeting with a local “ex-gay,” and while Sanchez himself didn’t come out in high school, he remembers the experience of being a closeted gay Christian and lets that inform the book. 

“During high school, I was pretty depressed and shut down,” Sanchez says. “Going through an experience like that, that confusion, I got frozen up inside. Now as I write about teens I’m able to say all the things that I couldn’t say, I can articulate and speak out. I’m finding my voice, the voice I didn’t have as a teen.”

SANCHEZ HAS BEEN finding his teen voice through his previous books, too. His popular “Rainbow” series (“Rainbow Boys,” “Rainbow High” and “Rainbow Road”) chronicle the experiences of a group of gay young adults, from their coming out journeys to a cross-country road trip post-high school graduation.

Like his other work, “God Box” is written for a younger audience, but refrains from “dumbing down” the content. The central event in the book is Manuel’s gay bashing at the hands of two high school homophobes, and the violence and its consequences are described in non-euphemistic detail, thereby avoiding any maudlin tone.

“Robert Frost said, ‘No tears for the writer, no tears for the reader,’” Sanchez says. “When I’m writing a manuscript, I work on it until I get to the point where I can cry with the readers. Much of this was looking at how much pain is caused by people who make judgments based on a skewed understanding of the Bible, how that does hurt us and how it hurt me.” 

Despite the anti-gay stance of many conservative religious organizations, Sanchez says he hasn’t received any negative feedback on the book, adding that a number of gay and gay-friendly religious networks have supported “The God Box.”

Part of the initial positive feedback could be attributed to novel’s accessibility, something that Sanchez notes isn’t often seen in the many “heady and intellectual” non-fiction books on the topic of Christianity and homosexuality.

“So much of what we learn is not through intellectual arguments but emotionally engaging stories, and that’s what I like to do.”