Big Gay Picture: Are You Better Off Than You Were Eight Years Ago?

Back in 2000, there was nothing like the refreshing and stereotype-busting portrayals of “gay slobs” like Cliff on Ugly Betty and Sarah Silverman’s gay friends Bill and Steve on The Sarah Silverman Program.

From left to right The Sarah Silverman Program's
Brian Posehn & Steve Agee; Ugly Betty's Cliff (David Blue)

Back in 2000, we may have had a mostly-closeted Wayland Smithers on The Simpsons, but now Wayland’s much further out and we also have regular gay animated characters on Family Guy, American Dad, and Drawn Together, and a town full of gay puppets on Rick and Steve: The Happiest Gay Couple in the World.

Back in 2000, we had Jack on Dawson’s Creek, but now we have a mini-explosion of gay teen characters on Degrassi: The Next Generation and the daytime soap As the World Turns, and even a surprising number of younger gay teens on Ugly Betty, Gossip Girl, and The United States of Tara (premiering in early 2009).

And back in 2000, a kiss between two men on television got the Christian right apoplectic and sent sponsors scurrying to pull their ads. Now we frequently see scenes of same-sex affection, on Brothers & Sisters, As the World Turns, and General Hospital: Nightshift, and often it doesn’t even warrant an AfterElton.com blog post.

As the World Turns' Luke & Noah

Meanwhile, back in 2000, the dedicated gay cable networks of here! and Logo (which owns AfterElton.com) did not even exist.

To make matters more interesting, scripted television doesn’t tell the whole story of gays on television the way it did in 2000. Now there’s much more reality television, and the competition shows at least have done a fantastic job of showing gay men in all their diverse (and sometimes infuriating) glory. Gay men still rarely appear on the dating reality shows, but hopefully that will change in the years ahead.

Survivor: Gabon's "bromance" between
gay Charlie (left) and straight Marcus

Back in 2000, Bravo had yet to run 2003’s Boy Meets Boy, its first tentative foray into gay reality programming; despite decent ratings, that show so scared skittish advertisers that the network cancelled a planned second season. But when Queer Eye for the Straight Guy Now became the network’s first break-out show that same year, it lead to virtual avalanche of gay-related reality Bravo projects, including Project Runway, Top Chef, Flipping Out, Shear Genius, Top Design, Tim Gunn’s Guide to Style, Million Dollar Listing, and The Rachel Zoe Project. In five short years, Bravo has become the “unofficial” Gay Network.

But it’s not just the presence of gays on television that makes 2008 so much better than 2000. It’s the absence of openly anti-gay stuff. In 2000, many gay folks were in the midst of an ultimately-successful campaign to get anti-gay Dr. Laura Schlesinger’s syndicated TV show cancelled. Meanwhile, gay issues and perspectives were routinely ignored (or misrepresented) in the news media, and forceful pro-gay voices like Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow, and (yes) Steven Colbert didn’t yet exist. Jon Stewart had barely just debuted on The Daily Show.

Steven Colbert (left) & Jon Stewart

In short, since 2000, the gay television landscape has become far richer, more diverse, and more interesting. The glass is more than half full, and getting fuller all the time. The exception, of course, is male bisexuality, which is still pretty much ignored.

But what about that lack of substantial gay characters on the broadcast networks? Let’s face it: as great as some of the cable gay characters are, most people still watch the majority of their television on the broadcast networks. Their viewership is declining (rapidly), but in any given week, the biggest four broadcast networks still reach between 29% and 34% of all American households; all the cable networks together only reach between 9% and 15%.

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