What a Difference a Decade Makes

Some idle thoughts for this week; we've come a long way with LGBT representation.

I know. Shocker, right? With marriage equality being passed in several states and with popular opinion being solidly egalitarian, that statement is fairly obvious. However, watching some older media recently, I realized how quickly the change has occurred.

Farscape (pretty much the best TV show ever, really) aired from 1999-2003 on the SciFi channel (that's basic cable for you non-USAians). During that time, it played with some pretty complex themes and edgy material. It was certainly implied that non-hetero aliens existed out in the universe. And yet, we never really saw them. There weren't any out and proud examples of gay Nebari or lesbian Peacekeepers, though we did get plenty of same-sex tension.

It wasn't until an episode called Twice Shy that we get our first lesbian kiss. Even then, I'm not sure it counts, as the kisser is being sort of mind controlled by the kissee. But it's presented as a heightening of that character's primary emotion -- sexual desire -- so we can assume that, yes, she does really want it. Anyway, the point is that I have to suspect this was pretty shocking at the time, 2003. Well, perhaps not shocking, but surprising and hard to get away with, even on basic cable. Now, of course, we've seen same-sex kissing on network TV plenty of times (though Modern Family somewhat controversially has only recently shown a kiss between the two gay dads). That's 10 years from "Omg, gay people on TV! And they put their lips together!" to "Uh, so what?"

If we spread our scope even farther, you can find some other hilarious examples. For instance, Queer as Folk, which started airing in 2000 on Showtime, was pretty risque and groundbreaking in its frank portrayal of queer sex. Now we've got Looking on HBO, which is similarly groundbreaking for its frank depiction of how boring and mundane queer life is. Which isn't to say it's a bad show, or that queer people as lame. It's saying that, hey, gay people live pretty much like straight people do. They have interpersonal drama and workplace problems, but mostly it's just getting along day by day. 14 years from "GAY PEOPLE ON TV???" to "I'm glad the rimjob scene is nice distraction from them talking about taxes or whatever."

And of course, before I go, I have to give a shout out to Ellen, whose show aired from 1993-1998, and whose coming out paved the way for a ton of LGBT visibility. Plenty of shows had gay characters before, even on networks -- I remember Roseanne in particular. But Ellen was one of the first, if not the first, to have its main character be gay as opposed to a quirky queer stereotype. She will always have my respect for that.