Gay Television is Where? Here! There are currently three cable television networks in the works that plan to target gay viewers. When we first heard this, our hearts soared. Gay people will soon have their very own programming like The Sopranos and Sex and the City! Okay, maybe not Sex and the City. It’s hard to imagine that show being any gayer than it already is. Then, of course, we remembered corporate television’s first forays into “gay” programming: a soap opera about sex-obsessed navel-gazers called Queer as Folk, and an embarrassingly unfunny minstrel show called Will and Grace. And we also remembered BET and Telemundo.

As for the Latino network Telemundo, it has an endless stream of oversexed latinos ripping off their clothes and falling into bed with each other.

Does all this mean that any future gay network is doomed to traffic in the most obvious of gay stereotypes? Cher concerts? An obsession with chiseled pecs, plastic surgery, and penis size? Lots of talk shows with Carson Kressley wannabes being bitchy?

There’s nothing necessarily wrong with stereotypes, of course. But there’s also a big difference between Priscilla, Queen of the Desert and To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar. The first is thoughtful, insightful and bust-a-gust funny; the second is, well, stupid.

We think the difference has to do with the intelligence of those involved, and their opinion of their presumed audience. Will these new gay networks take the high road? Or will they pander like George W. Bush at a meeting of war-mongering evangelical Christian billionaires who hate the environment?

History makes us very wary. But we’re nothing if not cockeyed optimists. This time it’ll be different! These Sea Monkey’s will live!

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