An essay titled "Outside Looking In" by Robert Black, author of The Real Life Channel for GLBT Month 2007.

That was how the character Sydney Myerson-Walsh introduced herself to me, back when I was first putting ideas together for The Real Life Channel. It was a surprise. Much of my inspiration for the book came from my time working on the set of Nickelodeon's You Can't Do That On Television in the mid-1980s – but there was no one like Sydney back there. To this day, I'm not entirely sure how I thought of her. But as most authors will tell you, when a character is that insistent about something, it's best to listen – and so the Myerson-Walsh family became part of the story.

The next question I faced was deciding how to write them. I'm an outsider when it comes to GLBT fiction. I'm not gay, so I don't have any experiences of coming out or being discriminated against to draw on. Also, Sydney is only one of three main characters in The Real Life Channel, and her dads only have supporting roles. It isn't a story about being gay. It's a story that just happens to have some gay characters in it. The more I thought about it, the more I felt like that was exactly the approach I should take. I think stories with that kind of approach are important to tell these days.

When I was a kid, one of my favorite TV shows was the original Star Trek. Even now, I count its creator Gene Roddenberry among my biggest writing influences. People today may not realize that one of the most revolutionary things Roddenberry did on Star Trek was give it a multiracial cast. Non-white characters like Uhura and Sulu were among the first on television to be shown working side-by-side as equals with their white counterparts. But Star Trek was never about Sulu being Asian or Uhura being black. That was just who they were – and that was enough to make a difference. Actress Nichelle Nichols, who played Uhura, tells a story about the time she met Martin Luther King Jr., when Dr. King told her how important a character Uhura was and what a vital message her presence on Star Trek delivered. I've been fortunate enough to hear Ms. Nichols tell that story in person, and it has always stuck with me. I certainly had it on my mind when I decided to include Sydney and her two dads in my book.

Prejudice comes from many sources, but I think one of the biggest is ignorance. When we never see people who are different from ourselves, our fear of the unknown leads us to believe the worst about them. But if we can see these people as people – happy and sad, full of hopes and dreams or worries and concerns, and everything else that makes us all human – then we can start to realize that the differences between us aren't so scary after all.

With the GLBT community, I've learned this lesson in many places, including one you might not expect – at my church. We Episcopalians have been working on GLBT inclusion for quite a while, and so I've had the chance to participate side-by-side with gay and lesbian people in church activities. We sing together in my choir, I see them bringing their children to services or having them baptized, and we celebrate Sundays and holidays as single congregation. Sydney's parents, Tim and Jerry, are based on several gay and lesbian couples I know – and are named after one of them, too.

My book isn't going to change the world, but I figure that if kids read about Sydney and her dads, and some of them start to feel like the family down the street isn't so weird after all – or maybe that their own family isn't so weird after all – then I'll have done some good. Sometimes, it takes a person on the outside to give others a look inside. That's my theory, anyway.