Best. Gay. Week. Ever. (March 12, 2010)

WHAT'S NEXT? KEVIN KILLING SCOTTY AND MITCHELL BECOMING AN EX-GAY?
Ever since a certain ... figure skater become a hot topic of conversation around these parts, it seems like it's been one depressing thing after another leading to all sorts of heavy conversations. After the "skater who shall not be named" debate, we had the deaths on Spartacus, Sean Hayes' coming out, and now the news of Kish going belly up on One Life to Live.

It's enough to drive an editor batty. Well, if he wasn't already pretty batty. 

Rather than a heavy dissertation on these various topics, I thought I'd try to have a little more fun with the issues. 

While the Kish news is very depressing, it wasn't exactly a surprise as it seems like gay storylines on U.S. soaps haven't been treated terribly well by some of the powers that be. Luke and Noah haven't had much to do of late on As the World Turns, and I won't even get into the whole original kiss/sex ban on that show. The Young and the Restless promised a gay storyline that was botched almost from the get go. And now Kish.

Talk about depressing. That's why when I read FakeName's reaction to the Kish news, I actually laughed outloud.

As for the 150+ comments on site, they went something like this:

BART AND LISA: AUGGHHH!
BART: I hate One Life to Live!
LISA! I hate ABC!
BART: I hate them more!
LISA: At least there is still Luke and Noah on As the World Turns!
BART: I hate them!
LISA: I hate you!
BART AND LISA: AUGGHHH!

I will say this about the ABC bashing going on: while I think it's perfectly appropriate to campaign to keep these characters and criticize the specific decision, I'd like to remind everyone that ABC Daytime actually did this storyline and totally went there with Kish. No network primetime show I can think of has ever made it as explicitly clear that two men had just had sex — romantic sex to boot! — as did OLTL. 

As for ABC in general, not only did they give us Kevin and Scotty on Brothers & Sisters and Marc on Ugly Betty, but now we have Mitchell and Cameron on Modern Family. In addition, one of the network's more promising fall pilots is It Takes a Village which not only has Cheyenne Jackson, but has a gay lead character played by the out  Christopher Sieber. That's right —two prominent gay roles played by gay men.

Perspective is important here. Let's not forget the fact that CBS has no gay characters, Fox only has Kurt on Glee, and NBC has two very secondary characters on shows about to be canceled anyway (Mercy and Trauma). Like, I said, it's perfectly fine to voice our concerns, but I don't think we do our cause any good when we throw the baby out with the bathwater.

And here I said I wasn't going to get all wonky!

Next page! Reenactments with Spartacus and ... Dynasty?