2008 Gay Pop Culture Wish List

The late night television closet door is finally kicked down

Let’s face it — gay men are funny. (And we obviously don’t mean that in a Wild Hogs gay-panic-laugh-at-the-creepy-gay-character way.) Long before gay men achieved our current level of acceptance and gay visibility, Americans routinely laughed with (and, yes, sometimes at) gay funny men including Charles Nelson Reilly and Paul Lynde. Up until 2003, funnyman Bruce Vilanch was a regular on the revived Hollywood Squares and still routinely writes some of the funniest lines uttered during the Academy Awards. Out comic Mario Cantone routinely performs around the country, and has appeared numerous times on The View and on ABC’s Men in Trees. And Neil Patrick Harris is by far the funniest thing on CBS’ How I Met Your Mother.

Clearly, gay men know their way around the funny bone. So why then has a U.S. talk show on a major broadcast or cable network never been hosted by an out gay man? Ellen DeGeneres and Rosie O'Donnell have proven lesbians can succeed in daytime television and The Graham Norton Show in the U.K. has proven that a gay man can be a huge hit with a mainstream audience. Yet the talk show door remains closed to gay men. (The closest we’ve come was in 1996 when Jim J. Bullock briefly co-hosted the syndicated daytime program The Jim J. and Tammy Faye Show.)

Given how often gay men have been the butt of the jokes on late night television, it seems doubly unfair that no out comedian has ever been given a shot at his own show. We’d like to see that rectified in 2008 and if the ratings continue to be low for How I Met Your Mother, we’d like to point out that Neil Patrick Harris has already guest hosted for Regis Philbin on his talk show several times. We’re just saying.

It’s up! It’s good! He’s gay! A gay man wins the Super Bowl

A great way to improve attitudes of straight men about gay men would be to finally have a professional athlete come out while still playing his sport. Yes, former NBA player John Amaechi’s announcement last year that he is gay was an important step forward in gay visibility. But let’s face it — it’s really going to take an athlete currently playing who comes out to truly mark a milestone. And we can’t think of a better moment than next month’s NFL Super Bowl

It’s doubtful a football player would voluntarily come out just before the biggest game of his career. Not only would it distract his teammates from their preparation, but it would also unfairly take the spotlight off of the achievement of reaching the big game. But between the conference championships and the Super Bowl itself, the media has two weeks worth of newspapers, radio, and television programming to fill and it’s not beyond plausibility that some reporter could break the story that a quarterback or linebacker is in a long term same-sex relationship (not that we advocate outing, mind you).

Imagine what it would mean to have so much of the world’s attention focused on the fact that gay men aren’t only hairdressers, fashion designers, and other stereotypically “gay” professions. Now imagine that the gay player actually scored the winning touchdown or kicked the winning field goal? That would be something to cheer about.

The CSI and/or the Law & Order franchise introduces an out gay character

Okay, so maybe Law & Order: SVU’s Dr. George Huang (B.D. Wong) is supposed to be gay, but that fact has never been made explicit and it’s doubtful the straight viewing audience has any clue about his orientation. Other than this shaky example, the police procedurals offer a barren landscape when it comes to GLBT representation. That is unless a particular episode centers on the investigation of some heinous sex crime committed by or against someone queer in a depraved, fetishistic underworld. Then, strangely, the GLBT community gets lots of representation.

Given how much of network primetime scripted programming is given over to police procedurals, it’s time for the CSI and Law & Order franchises (and their hordes of imitators) to pony up and offer some likeable, recurring, and explicitly gay characters. By not doing so, these shows subtly reinforce the idea of gay people as “other” as opposed to doctors, lawyers and forensic investigators. Television far too often still portrays gay men as bitchy office assistants, fashion designers, and drag queens. It’s been almost ten years since Homicide: Life on the Street’s Tim Bayliss (Kyle Secor) came out as bisexual, so it’s more than past time we got to see a gay man helping to catch the bad guys.