After watching Kevin’s marriage proposal to Scotty and Saul’s coming out statement to Kevin on the fantastic ABC hit show Brothers and Sisters on Sunday, you’d be forgiven for thinking “gay is the new normal.” The proposal and coming out statement, and the way the writers blended both stories into the plot as matter-of-factly as any other element, spoke volumes about the way Hollywood (or at least ABC) has begun to evolve. It was wonderful television because it was so, well, normal.
The thrill was short-lived, however. Viewers in Washington, D.C. were startled out of any pro-gay reverie they may have been experiencing by a teaser for yesterday’s 5pm newscast on the ABC affiliate that broadcasts Brothers and Sisters. The teaser promised a look at the question of whether gays and lesbians can “change” their “sexual preference.” The story, which trod the same well-worn, tired path of so many local news stories before it, used terms like “gay lifestyle” and “militant gays” to make the point that there is a “controversy” about whether or not you can “choose to be gay.”
Sigh.
One step forward, two steps back.
As we’ve written countless times before on this blog, the use of terms like “sexual preference” and “gay lifestyle” (not to mention “militant gays”) is often code for anti-gay language and media coverage that is more sensationalistic than sensitive. The term “preference” implies that we can choose our orientation any more than we might choose our favorite color. As if every heterosexual person “chose” to be straight.
The local affiliate’s story was clearly an attempt to grab ratings and keep local viewers tuned in (Brothers and Sisters is a top 20 show nationally). How juvenile that the station felt that a cheap ploy that effectively reduces us to zoo animals to be examined would be appropriate for their airwaves. How unfortunate that any goodwill developed by the national network’s airing of a positive, appropriate gay storyline was erased by the simplistic, sophomoric attempt of a local affiliate to boost their ratings.
Clearly, we still have a long way to go. Gay and lesbian communications issues are evolving, to be sure, with major corporations increasingly engaged with our community honestly and openly. But media coverage of our lives that focuses on reality instead of ratings ploys is still not quite there.
We’re not the "new normal" yet, but I hope that continued positive story lines in popular entertainment will advance the conversation to the point where the reductive ramblings of local news reporters are no longer appropriate or profitable.
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