Jazz hands! Meet the gay teen character on Ryan Murphy's "Glee"

 
Chris Colfier plays gay teen Kurt on the new series Glee

When it comes to gay visibility on TV, it's hard to do worse than Fox's failing grade last year from GLAAD. If any show might lift Fox out of that basement it's Ryan Murphy's new high school drama Glee. Even better, Glee will add a new gay to the desperately bare ranks of gay teens with the addition of fourteen-year-old Kurt, played by Chris Colfer. 

Read more about Chris and Kurt after the jump!

Chris with costar Jayma Mays (Ugly Betty)
  

Glee is set in a high school in Ohio where an idealistic teacher (hottie Matthew Morrison) is determined to lift the school's glee club to great glory. In doing so, he recruits a group of misfits including freshman Kurt, who isn't explicitly identified as gay in the pilot, but screams "gay" the way Bruce Willis screams straight (at least in the minds of your average American who doesn't know there are plenty of gay men like Willis). We don't see that much of Kurt in the first episode, but in the show's opening moments we see him being heaved into atrash bin by a group of bullies — after Kurt insists on removing his very fashionable jacket.

I didn't find that a very auspicious start (fashionable gay kid does drama and gets beat up by bullies? Sta-a-a-le!) but after the Glee panel at the Television Critics Association tour in Los Angeles, I had a chance to speak with Glee's creator Murphy (Nip/Tuck) who indicated Kurt is going to be more than just another stereotypical cliche. Murphy explained that the series' second episode would deal explicitly with Kurt's being gay and a later storyline would actually see Kurt becoming a star on the football team. 

Chris with the Glee cast

If I'm not mistaken, you have to go all the way back to Ricky Vasquez in 1992's My So-Called Life to find a such a young regular gay character on a mainstram show in the U.S., but perhaps between Glee and and Showtime's gay teen on United States of Tara, we're about to finally start seeing some more realistic gay teen portrayals again.

Colfer, the actor playing Kurt, is an eighteen-year-old from Clovis, California who did drama, was president of the writer’s club, edited the school's literary magazine and was both a speech and debate champion.

I'll have more with both Murphy and Colfer when the show airs later this spring.