Is a Gay Kiss on TV Finally Just a Kiss?

All things considered, 2000 was a watershed year for same-sex kissing. That was the year Showtime started burning up television screens with Queer as Folk, where same-sex kisses that involved tongue-to-tonsil contact were the norm, and generally led up to acts previously seen only in soft-core porn flicks.

Even on network TV, however, things were heating up. While Jack and Will were having their moment of pretend passion, teen drama Dawson's Creek boldly went where no network had gone before. Series regular Jack (Kerr Smith) angsted his way through his first love with Ethan (Adam Kaufman). Things didn't work out, as Ethan went back to his old boyfriend, but not before the two shared network TV's first really romantic boy-on-boy kiss.

Meanwhile, the double standard for lesbian vs. gay male kissing was in full swing at NBC, where Dr. Kerry Weaver (Laura Innes) and Dr. Kim Legaspi (Lost's Elizabeth Mitchell) fell in love and kissed on the network's long-running ER — during, of course, sweeps month.

In 2001, Buffy the Vampire Slayer's Willow (Alyson Hannigan) and Tara (Amber Benson) fell in love and kissed both passionately and romantically, in what may be the least sensationalized and most sincere same-sex pairing in network TV history — and not during sweeps, either. Things also got warmer for Kerry Weaver on ER, when hot firefighter Sandy Lopez (Lisa Vidal) outed her with a blistering kiss in front of the entire emergency room staff.

Finally, in 2003, the boys got a little action when, in its series finale, Dawson's Creek yet again raised the bar for gay boy romance. Jumping five years forward in time, the episode showed Jack in a serious relationship with Doug, the two of them making the decision to raise a dead female friend's child together. And their on-screen kiss? It prompted TV Guide to say that it proved Jack and Doug were “TV's hottest male couple this side of Queer as Folk.”

Things cooled off rapidly for gay guys on TV after that, though. In 2005, Queer as Folk came to the end of its five-year run on Showtime, and Six Feet Under aired its final episode, leaving The L Word as the last queer show standing on cable.

Will Truman did finally get a steady boyfriend and even had a passionate kiss, but in 2006, Will and Grace ended its long run on NBC. Things weren't looking very gay in TV land, especially for the boys.

Then along came Brothers and Sisters, and the love story of Kevin and Scotty. And lots and lots of kissing: romantic kissing as a prelude to sex, actual chemistry and a genuine, ongoing, dramatically important relationship given absolute parity with heterosexual relationships. And no one, absolutely no one, is objecting. The series creator and head writer, out gay playwright John Robin Baitz, told AfterElton.com: “Nobody raised an eyebrow. It wasn't even remotely controversial.”

When two nonrecurring characters on CBS' Cold Case, in a recent episode called “Forever Blue,” kissed with great passion and longing — and without anyone threatening to withdraw corporate sponsorship or bring down the wrath of the religious right, or even to stop watching — it did start to seem as if something had really shifted in the American consciousness.

So, is a gay kiss just a kiss now on network TV? Probably not. The vast majority of shows don't have gay characters at all, and when they do, they are almost never given romantic and sexual parity with straight characters. But there is no denying that levels of outrage have plummeted, and many straight viewers greet gay kisses with varying degrees of appreciation and little, if any, discomfort.

Of course, the level of outrage among viewers and advertisers shouldn't be used to measure the passion and romance levels of same-sex kisses. Concepts like dramatic integrity, emotional power and good old-fashioned chemistry are what make television kisses sexy and loving. But there's no denying the days when a dry-mouthed lip-touch between Christopher Reeve and Michael Caine in the 1982 movie Deathtrap was greeted with boos and departures by the audience are on their way out. Is the age of the same-sex TV kiss finally here? Let's hope so.