Dynasty’s Journey om Gay Panic to Gay Pri - The Stranger

gay son in dynasty

Willie Robertson says he's not sure if people are born gay, but he lov them jt the same — proven by the fact that he works alongsi gay people who produce his fay's realy show.

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DYNASTY’S JOURNEY OM GAY PANIC TO GAY PRI

* gay son in dynasty *

The TV show Dynasty featured a gay in (and her son). But for years, spe the show’s anythg-go nature, there was one thg that Dynasty uldn’t get away wh: showg a happy homosexual.

Puttg a gay man on one of the most inic and popular shows of the was a long, multi-year fight — both on-screen and behd-the-scen — but was nothg pared to the battle took to keep him there. The story of Dynasty’s ntroversial gay son starts back 1979 wh, of all thgs, the oil crisis. And the son, Steven, who’s hidg his homosexualy om his nservative dad.

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” There had seldom been any recurrg gay characters on primetime TV — there was Jody on Soap, a fotten barfly on The Corner Bar, and gut-player Lori Shannon as Beverly LaSalle on All the Fay.

Dynasty’s pilot posns Steven ont and center, wh a climactic scene which Blake nonts his son about beg gay. He mands that Steven “straighten yourself out, ” hurls slurs at him, and sists that Steven never brg homosexualy to the hoe.

There was so much stigma around homosexualy then that for many queer people, was simply easier to acquice and pretend they’d gone straight — pecially around fay.

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Over the 1970s, there had been a steady rise gay characters, acpanyg the growg queer liberatn movement.

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) But the rise gay visibily on televisn ran to a brick wall late 1980s wh the electn of Ronald Reagan. There were over a dozen gay characters on TV 1979, but by 1981 there were almost none.

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He’d appeared on a gay-ish episo of The Love Boat a year earlier, and had lots of ias for where he uld take one of TV’s only gay characters.

And then there was Newt Dieter, a gay muny lear who was often sought out by TV producers to vet their scripts. His job was to make sure Dynasty didn’t ploy any offensive trop; for example, he advoted for a rctn the number of f-slurs, as well as removal of the somewhat ls egreg phrase “gay schmay. So when this pilot fally aired, was wh a lot of liberate work on the part of creators, the producer, the actor, and even a gay muny lear to make sure they got the Steven character right.

*BEAR-MAGAZINE.COM* GAY SON IN DYNASTY

'Dynasty' Star Gordon Thomson Com Out As Gay | HuffPost Voic .

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