15 LGBTQIA+ movies to watch if you liked Love, Simon

Geography Club

Geography Club is about a gay teen named Russell who is stuck in the closet. He’s a football player who’s expected to date the hot popular girls and live the life his All-American father wants him to lead. But that’s not what he wants.

Russell is secretly dating another football player, quarterback Kevin, who is fine staying in the closet to maintain a “normal” life. But Russell doesn’t want that life anymore.

When Russell and Kevin are caught kissing by another student, Min, they think she’s going to blackmail them. All she wants to do, though, is introduce them to the school’s “Geography Club” which isn’t what it seems. It’s actually a support group for the school’s closeted or questioning LGBTQIA+ students to get together in secret.

Other members of the Geography Club include Min and Terese, a lesbian couple who hide their relationship under the pretense of them being best friends, and Ike, who is still questioning who exactly he is. As the club gets bigger, the group struggles to figure out what to do about it.

If they made it an official Gay-Straight Alliance, then they would all be outed, something they’re not ready for. But with Russell being forced to date popular, sex-crazed Trish in order to help out his best friend Gunnar and his real relationship with Kevin hiding in the shadows, he struggles to deal with everything.

Geography Club is your typical coming-out story, with the masculine, attractive football player struggling to come to terms with his sexuality out of fear of his teammates and oppressive father finding out. But that story isn’t invalid. Every coming-out story, especially in mainstream movies that will reach a larger audience, deserves to be recognized because you never know whom it may help.