The Gayest Thing You'll See This Week

This is a picture of actor Jack Coleman (L), currently HRG or Noah Bennett on ABC's "Heroes." In the early 1980's, long before I came out to my family, Jack was a different kind of hero to me. His character was one of Prime Time TV's first serious gay characters, Steven Carrington. Of course, it didn't last long and any mention of Steven's sexuality was long gone after the first season or so.

Over at Towleroad today, they posted the video below, chronicling the history of gay characters on Prime Time soaps. That's gorgeous Billy Campbell ("The 4400") as Steven's lover in the Dynasty clip and "Desperate Housewives" co-star Doug Savant in the "Melrose Place" clip.

The 7-minute video is hardly definitive, but does show progress over the last 20-odd years.

My question is, when will Prime Time Network TV be ready to present a serious drama in which all the main characters are gay? I'm guessing not for another 20 years, which saddens me. After all, the BBC and Showtime have been doing so for quite a while now (see the other two clips, probably NSFW)...

"Queer As Folk" (US version):



"The 'L' Word:"

GLAAD gives out an annual award for positive portrayals of LGBT people and characters in media. It would be so nice if they didn't have to. In fact, it would be even nicer if GLAAD didn't need to exist. Personally, I'm tired of being treated as a 2nd Class Citizen just because of the way I was born. I hope I live to see the day when people look back on LGBT history and think "How could we have been so stupid?"

More anon,
Prospero