7 of the Bt Gay Comedians to Check Out Right Now

Contents:

• JERROD CARMICHAEL OUT AS GAY HIS NEW EDY SPECIAL
• 7 HILAR GAY COMEDIANS WHO SLAY EVERY PERFORMANCE
• THE GREATT GAY COMEDIANS OF ALL TIME

JERROD CARMICHAEL OUT AS GAY HIS NEW EDY SPECIAL

“I remember Googlg gay ics and nothg g up, pecially gay Black ics, ” says Perks, whose blazgly funny stand-up work rang om sweet to goofy to rnchy. Havg a moment, the late ’90s and early ghts, meant that, sudnly, a gay performer or character would appear a space that had been prevly domated by straight people — say, at the center of a TV s like “Will & Grace” or a stand-up special, or as the voice of reason to the leadg lady a romantic edy like “My Bt Friend’s Weddg” — and everyone uld appld and say, “We solved ! ” It was a pop-cultural phenomenon that started to surface when Perks, who’s 31, and other gay edians of his generatn were middle school.

Gay edy isn’t niche ’s all changed so fast that at one pot, while he’s discsg a sketch about rporate sponsorship of gay pri paras that he did wh Lil Nas X last May, Yang, 31, tch himself and says, lghg, “Why am I talkg about this the past tense, like ’s another era?

(The podst format, which gay obssns n be discsed and nstcted at length, or which the hetero world n be filtered through gay sensibili, as is on Sam Taggart and Gee Civeris’s “StraightLab, ” has bee fertile turf for emergg edy stars. ” says Rogers, who, like all of his lleagu, has many ncurrent projects; he spent an early month of the panmic hostg (hilarly) a pet-groomg realy show lled “Hte Dog” for HBO Max; he -created a short-form seri lled “Gayme Show” (“for Quibi, rt peace”), whose wrg room was “entirely stocked wh queer people”; and he will have a regular role on a new Showtime edy lled “I Love That for You, ” tentatively schled for this sprg, wh the “S. ” Lyn’s style of humor — bchy, suatg, spiked wh alhol, rancid wh self-mockery — was rarely overtly queer; was what would now be scribed as “queer-d” — other words, legibly gay to anybody, gay or straight, who knew what signifiers to look for but to the obliv, merely droll.

7 HILAR GAY COMEDIANS WHO SLAY EVERY PERFORMANCE

Lyn (who was self-protectively disparagg about gay men terviews) and ntemporari like Charl Nelson Reilly on “Match Game” (another game show) the 1970s were gay entertaers before that was a tegory; they are the first DNA strand ntemporary gay male edy’s triple send strand was the first generatn of out male edians — guys like the performance artist Frank Maya, who beme the first out gay man to get a spot on the early ’90s MTV seri “Half Hour Comedy Hour, ” and Bob Smh, the first to crack “The Tonight Show” durg the Jay Leno era, and Stt Thompson, the gay member of the Canadian edy qutet the Kids the Hall. They were pneers who had to walk a plited le, at once makg stand-up safe for gay performers and makg gay edy palatable for straight dienc that, 30 years ago, were still far more fortable lghg at queer people than wh them. And the third strand was drag — there all along, olr than pop culture self, the subject of angry ntentn the gay muny between those who embraced as an act of transgrsive fiance and genr subversn and those who nounced as mstrelsy or, worse, bad for the e; pop culture, was a s-long journey om “La Cage x Foll” on Broadway the 1980s to “RuPl’s Drag Race” the 2000s, at which pot the naysayers fally had to adm feat.

THE GREATT GAY COMEDIANS OF ALL TIME

Source photos: Alex SchaeferOne thg that distguish the new wave of gay edy is that n draw om all the tradns and rebe them to somethg new — at once polil and mpy; cheerful and subversive; stumed and nfsnal; explic and mastream. In an era when sexual inti are proudly poro, every kd of gay edian gets to be every kd of gay edian, sometim wh a sgle five-mute scene. It’s an approach that nnects gay edy to a long Amerin tradn of outsir humor — the humor of the opprsed — and an equally long tradn which those outsirs bee sirs.