Gay Kisses on TV: Finally No Big Deal?

More recently, shows like Ugly Betty and Men in Trees have included gay characters, but despite featuring male couples in romantic relationships, both have been notable for their lack of any same-sex kissing between them.

Gay kisses have occasionally appeared on network television in the last few years. A kiss between two police officers on a December 2006 episode of Cold Case was so noteworthy (and passionate) we were actually inspired to interview one of the actors doing the kissing. Early on into the relationship between Luke and Noah on As the World Turns there were two kisses between the teens. But most notably, it was ABC’s Brothers & Sisters which has been revolutionary in its treatment of its gay characters. From the very first, the ABC drama treated its gay characters exactly like its heterosexual ones, featuring same-sex kissing that was very nearly equivalent to its treatment of heterosexual kisses.

Matthew Rhys (left) & Luke MacFarlane

But now suddenly, the floodgates of gay male kissing seem to have opened — even in some seemingly unlikely places.

“I’m so proud to be part of the first gay kiss on ABC Family!” says Max Greenfield, who plays Calvin’s love interest, Michael, on Greek.

In other words, when even the ABC Family Channel is showing same-sex kissing, you know that things have changed. But why now?

Partly it’s been driven by one network, ABC, which has pushed the envelope in terms of same-sex affection and set a tone for the entire industry. Three of the five above-mentioned kisses were on ABC or its cable subsidiary, ABC Family.

“There’s just not the issue with [ABC] or the studio about, okay, we have to treat his [Kevin’s] physical relationships differently than we treat all the other characters’ physical relationships,” says Ken Olin, now an executive producer of Brothers & Sisters. “There’s no more discussion about how good a kiss is with [Brothers & Sisters characters] Kitty and McCallister than there is with Kevin and Scotty.”

Meanwhile, television advertisers, many of which famously pulled out of the controversial thirtysomething and Melrose Place episodes, causing millions in lost revenue for the networks, seem far less wary of scenes of same-sex affection today.

“The vibe that I get is that there is just no problem,” says David Marshall Grant, a story editor on Brothers & Sisters. “I’m not getting a sense that anybody at ABC is concerned in any way about this, and I’ve not heard anything about advertisers.”

Ken Olin (left) & David Marshall Grant

Photo credit: Frederick M. Brown (left) & Thos Robinson (right) /Getty Images)

Better still, audiences have clearly shown an increased tolerance for same-sex kissing. The last four episodes of Brothers & Sisters, which were particularly pro-gay and featured plenty of same-sex kissing, all saw strong ratings, winning their time-slot in both “Total Viewers” and “Adults 18-49.” The “gay wedding” finale drew the same number of viewers as last year’s finale — an impressive achievement in the post-writers’-strike TV landscape where many other shows saw numbers for their finales plummet compared to last year.

The Brothers & Sisters gay wedding
Photo credit Michael Desmond / ABC