gay | PBS NewsHour

Contents:

• GAYS ON TV
• THERE IS NO ‘GAY GENE.’ THERE IS NO ‘STRAIGHT GENE.’ SEXUALY IS JT PLEX, STUDY NFIRMS
• GAY
• 12 POPULAR CHILDREN’S TV SHOWS THAT HAVE GAY CHARACTERS
• OH YOU SILLY THG, OF COURSE HE’S GAY
• ARTHUR'S TEACHER OUT AS GAY AND GETS MARRIED ON THE PBS KIDS SHOW'S SEASON PREMIERE

GAYS ON TV

A day after Massachetts' hight urt l agast the ban on same-sex marriag, Terence Smh exam the proliferatn -- and populary -- of gay and lbian-oriented televisn shows, and what this new trend Amerin televisn suggts about public attus toward homosexualy.

Now shootg s fourth season, the provotive seri about gay and lbian characters als wh sensive issu such as AIDS, promiscuo sex and dg this scene, muny members discs a rash of gay, "Queer as Folk": Who do you thk will e nng? It had never been done before, a drama about gay people, and I thk we were very … I thk we were very sred at the begng.

Prevly there had been gay characters who were always supportg characters — you know, the bt iend, the neighbor, whatever.

THERE IS NO ‘GAY GENE.’ THERE IS NO ‘STRAIGHT GENE.’ SEXUALY IS JT PLEX, STUDY NFIRMS

"Queer as Folk, " which is set Ptsburgh, but shot on lotn here Toronto, is a breakthrough broadst two rpects: It's attracted a large crossover dience that clus many straight young women; and picts s gay and lbian characters as livg full liv, profsnally and, "Queer as Folk": Don't expect too much. The broadst is a forenner one of the more dramatic new trends Amerin televisn: An explosn of programs on work and ble that featur gay and lbian characters and them. This season there are some 20 seri, dramas or realy shows, that feature gay and lbian ble work Bravo ma a splash recently wh s realy show "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, " which a team of gay men mak over athetilly challenged straight KRESSLEY, "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy": You only have two pairs of pants your whole closet!

ABC's new edy "It's All Relative" featur a gay uple a 20-year relatnship who are fathers to a llege-aged dghter.

It won 16 Emmy nomatns recently, more than any other, "Six Feet Unr": It's not like they're not gog to know that we're gay. And "Will & Grace" on NBC, now s fifth season, shows two gay characters and is the third-most-watched s on work televisn. Social scientists see this proliferatn of gay and lbian-themed televisn as reflective of a broar societal trend.

GAY

Suzanna Walters is the director of women's studi at Geetown Universy and thor of "All the Rage: The Story of Gay Visibily Ameri. The optns for lbians and gays ten, 15 years ago was eher plete visibily or awful, heo, you know, vic stereotyp. There's been this, you know, sea change our culture, where gays and lbians have entered to the sort of popular imagatn mastream televisn, work and ble televisns, films, advertisg.

The timated 6 to 7 percent of the adult populatn Ameri that intifi self as gay, lbian, bisexual, or transgenr has a llective buyg power timated at $485 billn a year.

12 POPULAR CHILDREN’S TV SHOWS THAT HAVE GAY CHARACTERS

We have not seen any what I would nsir hont portrayals of the homosexual liftyle on televisn at least 20 gays nsistently are portrayed as the loyal iend, the most self-sacrificg person, even the most morally upstandg person. Is ls evince Canada, where PriVisn, a 24-hour, seven-day-a-week, all-gay channel has been on the air for two Canadian statn is advertisg-supported, but reli on subscriber fe as well.

Amerin media pani have been actively nsirg startg their own 24/7 gay and lbian ble giant Via announced plans for a gay work last year, g the rourc of s Showtime and MTV channels, but put the project on hold recently, cg the weak advertisg ble systems and advertisers the U. It's safe to say that a lot of the advertisg cisns this untry are ma by a lot of men, a lot of straight men, and a lot of the ncerns or the disfort that people feel about what they intify as gay is often associated wh gay sex. Well, I'd be ncerned about a gay channel even if nobody I knew was watchg for the same reason I'd be ncerned about a red-light district my town.

OH YOU SILLY THG, OF COURSE HE’S GAY

But PriVisn anchor Renee Olbert sists that her channel fills a void for gay people, airg shows on travel, sports, and news. Still, Suzanna Walters says acceptabily of gay them has s example, there is a world of difference between the edic "Will & Grace" and the sometim raw "Queer as Folk.

ARTHUR'S TEACHER OUT AS GAY AND GETS MARRIED ON THE PBS KIDS SHOW'S SEASON PREMIERE

That's the great fear that, you know, pictg gay sexualy will be the, you know, the one le that n't be crossed, and certaly mastream work televisn has followed that. Co-creator Cowan says his show portrays a realistic range of characters, and the "oversexed" label is too readily applied to gay timacy. We are sayg gay people have sex the same as straight people do, and, you know, we have to sort of get over that.

It is worth keepg md that this study only vers some typ of sexualy — gay, lbian and cis-straight — but don’t offer many sights to genr inty. Humans have tried to unrstand human sexualy for centuri — and geics rearchers joed the ay the early 1990s after a seri of studi on tws suggted homosexualy ran fai.

“As a teenager tryg to unrstand myself and unrstand my sexualy, I looked at the ter for “the gay gene” and obvly me across Xq28, ” said Fah Sathirapongsasuti, a study -thor and senr scientist at 23andMe, which he joked once led him to believe he hered his gayns om his mother. “We worried a lot about volunteer bias, ” said Bailey, whose rearch clus a wily publicized study on Xq28 and gay brothers om 2018. Sanrs llaborated wh Bailey on those earlier studi and said their work had always admted that there was no sgle “gay gene.