The AfterElton.com 2007 Visibility Awards

Best Same-Sex Kiss

If we’d tried to give an award here even two years ago, there wouldn’t have been any competition, but thanks to Brothers & Sisters, As The World Turns, and Torchwood, we actually have a number of great kisses to choose from. In fact, they were all such great kisses that we’re declaring a three-way tie!

Best Talk Show (tie)

Ellen, Syndicated

While it would be nice to have an out man hosting a talk show like Graham Norton in the U.K., we do want to acknowledge that this year Ellen Degeneres started talking about the pink elephant on her show. Ellen not only discussed her own experiences as a gay woman, including her relationship with Portia De Rossi, but she also got gay male celebrities to open up. T. R. Knight, Neil Patrick Harris, and Nathan Lane all dropped by and to varying degrees had interesting things to say about being gay men in the public eye.

The Graham Norton Show, BBC America

U.S. viewers can only wish they had a talk show that was as gay, brash, and funny as The Graham Norton Show. Every week Norton welcomes an eclectic variety of guests and manages to infuse his program with a gay sensibility that mainstream British audiences have warmly embraced. Norton's show was such a hit that the first season was extended and the second season had to be filmed in a larger studio. With the writers' strike showing no end, U.S. audiences would do well to start tuning in.

Best Television Trend

Well-written, complex transgender characters.

It started last year with Alexis on Ugly Betty and continued in 2007 with Dirty Sexy Money’s Carmelita and All My Children’s Zoe/Zarf. Finally, transgender characters that aren’t prostitutes, mentally ill, or, worst of all, serial killers. (Note that all three shows are on ABC.)

Unfortunately, both ABC’s thankfully now canceled Big Shots and HBO’s Entourage included offensive, stereotypical portrayals of transgender women as oversexed, desperate creatures to be laughed at, thereby proving this trend isn’t entirely dominant.