Writers across time have valued the use of fiction as a means of truth-telling. Fiction that portrays sexual minorities can lay claim to a place in the school curriculum for many of the same reasons that people include Shakespeare or Twain: they speak to the human experience in all its variety. But for those same reasons, fiction that speaks to gay and lesbian experiences is the target of critics. They are, of course, the same sort of critics who attack the works of Shakespeare and Twain because those works also tell truths that some would rather not have told. Central to the challenge of attending to gay and lesbian themes in the classroom is criticism--sometimes merely a sense of wariness--that proceeds from a reduction of homosexual life contexts merely to sex. Anything that approaches the sexual, regardless how innocent, is suspect. However, set aside the "sex" in homo-sex-uality and a whole world remains to be explored through fiction, which both distances the reader from the realities that underlie the story and creates a bond between the reader's life and the lives of the fictional characters. There is a growing body of accessible, inclusive fiction for students of all ages. In this article, the author reviews available works that are somewhat older as well as new books that could help educators to integrate gay- and lesbian-themed fiction into the curriculum.