When It Comes to Gay Characters, When Will the Teen Channels Grow Up?

On November 7th, the Disney Channel premiered a new show, Shake It Up!, that tells the story of a group of teens who work as dancers on a local TV show. But they’re often sabotaged in their efforts to get ahead by the flamboyant, stereotypically “gay” German exchange student Gunther (and his twin sister Tinka).

Shake It Up!'s Tinka (Caroline Sunshine) and Gunther (Kenton Duty)

Meanwhile, TeenNick (the channel known as The N until last year, an off-shoot of the children's channel Nickelodeon) is airing new episodes of DeGrassi (formerly DeGrassi: The Next Generation), which includes the character of Riley Stavros, a formerly closeted jock who is slowly working his way out of the closet.

Degrassi's Riley Stavros (Argiris Karras) and boyfriend Zane Park (Shannon Kook-Chun)

What’s this? Are gay characters finally appearing on American television aimed at younger teenagers and tweens – programming that is, in actually, often also watched by children even younger than that?

Not so fast.

“Gunther is a lot like the character of Ryan played by Lucas Grabeel in the High School Musical movies,” says a 14-year-old fan who first drew our attention to Shake It Up! “They're doing that thing where they can't make an official gay Disney character, so they dress up a 'musical theater' boy in pink sparkly clothes so that everybody watching knows he's supposed to be gay, but they just don't say it so parents won't throw a hissy fit.”

Gunther (in hat, sequins and stripes) and his Shake It Up! castmates

Meanwhile, DeGrassi is a foreign import that TeenNick has picked up from much more liberal and gay-tolerant Canada.

And when AfterElton.com contacted both Disney and TeenNick (which is owned by MTV/Viacom, which also owns AfterElton.com), hoping to speak with someone about present and future gay-themed programming on those channels, Disney denied our requests outright, and after initially agreeing to schedule an interview, a representative from TeenNick seemed completely befuddled by the subject matter, and eventually didn’t respond to inquiries.

This is clearly something these networks don’t want to talk about. And why would they? A lot of people say that gay characters aren’t appropriate in programming for teenagers or pre-teens.

But this, of course, is nonsense, based solely on stereotypes and misconceptions. An age-appropriate gay or questioning teenage character is no more “sexual” than a straight character – and a character coming out as gay is, or shouldn’t be, any more scandalous than a straight guy announcing he’s taking a girl to a dance.  

It’s true that younger teens are less likely to be openly gay or questioning, or even aware that they’re gay, but part of the reason for this is surely the almost complete censorship of gay content in most of the media aimed at them.

And what of gay-headed families, which are increasingly common in schools and communities all across America?