Television’s Gay Agenda

It’s hard to see anything other than repressed homosexuality and the dysfunction it breeds at the heart of Tennessee William’s breakthrough play The Glass Menagerie and most of his plays that followed, including A Streetcar Named Desire and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.

And while there has no doubt been the occasional heterosexual boy who had his life saved when a caring adult told him it’s okay, maybe even better, to be different, the events in the musical Mame, the music to which was written by out songwriter Jerry Herman, based on a novel by bisexual writer Patrick Dennis, more accurately describe something that virtually every gay boy experiences at least once.

It’s no coincidence that while the best gay writers of the 50s and 60s were making their mark on American stages, many of today’s best gay writers are making their mark on television. It’s the medium that arguably has the most influence and commands the most respect, so it’s where some of our top writers have gravitated.

Notable out gay television writer-producers clockwise from top left:
Silvio Horta, Allan Ball, Bryan Fuller, Patrick Sean Smith, Greg Berlanti, Marc Cherry

The real question is why these themes and ideas are finding such fertile ground among American audiences today, at least among more liberal viewers. After all, despite the fact that these television shows are not overtly “gay,” the ideas they promulgate are often very provocative, even revolutionary.

The truth may be that America, despite being held in the political thrall of right-wing reactionaries for the last fifteen years, still has a fundamentally liberal outlook and a yearning for innovation and new ideas. And where would the country most likely turn for these ideas? It’s a cliché to say that being an outsider in a culture gives one a perspective that “insiders” may not have, but there must be some truth to the notion; ironically, oppression always seems to have inspired great art.

In short, it might take an outsider to see exactly what’s wrong with a society. Who better to write insightfully about racism than James Baldwin and Ralph Ellison? Who better to write about sexism than Virginia Woolf and Margaret Atwood?

For most of our lives, we gay men navigate a treacherous road when it comes to family, friendship, suburbia, and sexual fidelity. So when it comes to critiquing and attempting to improve these same institutions, who better to do it than us?