Is a Gay Kiss on TV Finally Just a Kiss?

When did it happen? When did a gay TV kiss become just a kiss?

Last week on Cold Case, two cops locked lips in a passionate, romantic, man-on-man smooch to a resounding lack of outrage from, well, anyone at all. Even the gays didn't raise much more than an eyebrow.

It certainly wasn't like that in 1991, when bisexual attorney C.J. Lamb (Amanda Donohoe) brushed lips with mousy little Abby Perkins (Michele Green) on L.A. Law in one of the most passionless kisses in television history. And the situation hadn't improved by 1994, when Fox wouldn't show Melrose Place's Matt Fielding (Doug Savant) kissing Billy's (Andrew Shue) best man, Rob (Ty Miller), opting instead to simply show Billy's shocked reaction to the kiss.

But at some point between 1991 and 2006, the passionate, same-sex kiss arrived on network television — and almost no one noticed.

Of course, cable got there first, and a small core of the TV audience was probably somewhat desensitized by all the soul-rending, heart-stopping, tonsil-probing, same-sex kisses on Showtime's Queer as Folk and The L Word, and HBO's Six Feet Under and even Oz (although “romantic” is not a word that comes to mind when describing kisses on Oz ). Brokeback Mountain's huge crossover success probably had something to do with it, too, although Jack and Ennis' shock therapy alone can't account for the gay kiss sea change that has swept America.

The lesbian TV kiss has fared better than the gay TV male kiss, probably due to lesbian sweeps week syndrome. When it comes to boys kissing boys, however, network television has been notoriously skittish.

In fact, unless you count a 1994 farcical kiss between Chandler and Joey on Friends, lesbians were pretty much left to carry the flag for same-sex kissing on network TV from 1991 until 2000. Three years after the C.J.-Abby kiss on L.A. Law, Roseanne Barr kissed Mariel Hemingway under the burden of extreme network disapproval. It was a miracle the kiss happened at all, so it's probably petty to point out that it was not hot and totally devoid of romance.

Then in 1997, Ellen DeGeneres blew network television's closet door wide open with the infamous “Puppy” episode of her sitcom, Ellen, in which the fictional character, like DeGeneres herself, came out as a lesbian, to a storm of right-wing opposition.

The next year, 1998, marked the debut of Will & Grace, featuring out gay lawyer Will Truman and his straight female friend Grace Adler as best friends and on-again-off-again roomies in Manhattan. The fact that this NBC sitcom was a huge hit didn't do much for the course of gay male romance or kissing on TV, since poor Will got nothing — not even a dry-mouthed peck on the lips — from a date until 2005. (Unless you count the 2000 joke kiss with his friend Jack. Which you shouldn't.)