The History of TV's Gay Teens from "ATWT" to "Queer as Folk"

If As the World Turns introduced America to gay boys who could have been members of their own family, Desperate Housewives introduced America to the queer bad seed, Andrew Van De Kamp (Shawn Pyfrom). As befits a show where adultery, suicide, and blackmail are as common as ring around the collar in a 1950s detergent ad, Andrew manages to get into pretty much every kind of trouble a teenager could get into, whether it’s drug abuse, hit and run driving, illicit sex, or working the streets. And he does it all while being really extremely unpleasant, manipulative, and conniving.

Andrew’s boyfriend Justin (Ryan Carnes) vanishes after the third season, but not before he, too, tries his hand at blackmail, hoping to get one of the women of Wisteria Lane to have sex with him so he can turn straight. She instead helps him accept himself as a gay man, and he goes on to become more deeply involved with Andrew – which is either a good or bad thing, depending on how you look at it. Justin seemed to think it was good, even though he frequently got dragged unwillingly into Andrew’s wicked ways. When Andrew’s mother, Bree, challenged him about his feelings for her rotten son, he told her:

"When my parents first heard I was gay, they kicked me out. They said I had 'debased' the entire family and that they couldn't love me any more until I had changed. But Andrew said that I should be ashamed of them because they were too stupid to know how great I was. That's the thing about Andrew, he doesn't take crap from anyone. How can you not love someone like that?"

Bree eventually softened toward Justin and Andrew’s relationship, but Andrew, who was all about getting revenge on mommy, wasn’t content with that. He slept with Bree’s boyfriend and finally ended up working as a prostitute, pretty much all to get back at her for initially rejecting him for his sexual orientation (which is possibly bisexual as opposed to strictly gay).

Desperate Housewives was created by an out gay man, Marc Cherry (Golden Girls), and while Andrew isn’t exactly a poster child for political correctness, well… it’s Desperate Housewives. No one is.

General Hospital (2005)

Lucas Jones, nephew of soapdom’s ultimate uber-couple Luke and Laura, was originally played on General Hospital by Ryan Carnes, who also starred as Justin in Desperate Housewives as well as in the gay indie flick Eating Out (2004). He left the show just before his character came out as gay, however, and the role was re-cast, in true soap fashion, with another actor, Ben Hogestyn (American Dreams).

At the time Carnes’ departure was announced in September of 2005, a poll on SoapCentral.com indicated the majority of viewers wished General Hospital would just scrap the whole gay storyline. They didn’t.

Like several gay TV teens before him, Lucas’ coming out happens when he’s the victim of a hate crime. His mother has her doubts, but his father, atypically for gay teenage television characters, accepts him easily.

Lucas doesn’t want to come forward about his attack, and because of his hesitation, another gay man – one Lucas actually is dating – is also attacked, which isn’t exactly the recipe for happily ever after for the couple.