“I'm more man than you'll ever be, and more woman than you'll ever get,” says Lindy (Antonio Fargas) in 1976's Car Wash. The film marked the writing debut of future director Joel Schumacher, who came out nearly 30 years after creating the defiantly proud Lindy.

The intervening years have seen a relative explosion of gay characters in both television and film. There have been stereotypes as well as characters who have broken those stereotypes. But very few of these characters have actually been people of color. The scant few who have appeared have often been drag queens or comic relief — shades of Lindy, one might say.

In his book, One More River to Cross: Black & Gay in America, Keith Boykin writes: “much of the public debate about race and sexual orientation assumes that all blacks are straight and all gays are white. When we compare or contrast blacks with gays, we sometimes overlook people who are part of both communities: black lesbians and gay men.” In fact, when asked who was the first black gay character they saw on television or film, many people will name Anthony (Meshach Taylor) from Designing Women, a character who was actually straight, even though the creators had to occasionally hammer in this fact.

I barely remember any black gay characters from my childhood — until RuPaul hit it big in the '90s. RuPaul was undeniably a trailblazer, but she was also cut from the same cloth that Lindy was from: defiant and proud, but desexualized — a sassy eunuch, if you will. Several years later, I went to see The Broken Hearts Club and was taken in by Billy Porter's performance as Taylor, who was quick to give advice that began with, “As a person in a long-term relationship …” But oddly, we never saw Taylor 's much-mentioned partner, which left him relatively sexless in comparison to the other characters in the film.

When I saw Patrik-Ian Polk's film Punks the same year, it was quite astonishing how different a film could be by just allowing all the characters to have a sex life. This aspect was important to Polk in both Punks and in his Logo TV series, Noah's Arc: “Why can't you give characters a sex life?” Polk asks. “It is important that when you are given an opportunity [to create a show or film] that you start pushing boundaries and show reality.”

The reality of black gay life is often obscured by other social issues. Steven Emmanuel, who runs the website Queer Kid of Color, describes the current state of black gay male media representation as “mediocre.”

He explains: “According to the media, black gay men can only be HIV-positive and feminine. Masculine black gay males are closeted and have to bring home girlfriends to their families and friends so that they can create an illusion. They have to sleep with their girlfriends whenever they ask for sex, so these women won't think that their boyfriends are gay, and on the side they're dating men, perhaps even sleeping with them. I don't know what else to call that but a system. A system that has been built by mainstream media.”

The system Emmanuel refers to was recently shown in a Law & Order: SVU episode that depicts a ring of married, successful, black gay men, none of whom identify as gay but who meet for weekly parties wherein they have sex and pass around HIV. As befits the Law & Order dictum of being “ripped from the headlines,” the episode aired during the furor surrounding J.L. King's book, On the Down Low. The show somewhat balanced out this portrayal with a later episode in which the character of Detective Fin Tutuola (Ice-T) has a gay son who is out and comfortable with his sexuality.

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