“GLAAD is calling on the seven major film studios to make sure that 20% of annual major studio releases include LGBTQ characters by 2021, and that 50% of films include LGBTQ characters by 2024,” whines GLAAD’s 2018 Studio Responsibility Index. They justify this demand with a convenient internal study: “GLAAD’s own Accelerating Acceptance report shows that 20 percent of Americans aged 18 to 34 and 12 percent aged 35-51 identify as LGBTQ.” The 20 percent number has been repeated by gay rights advocates without much proof. Actual studies done by Gallup, the Williams Institute, and the Centers for Disease Control put that number at between 1.7 percent and 4 percent. Not surprisingly, if you ask people on the street what percentage of Americans identify as LGBTQ, you’ll get a much higher number. Why? Mostly it’s because of how many LGBTQ characters are on TV and in the movies.
Can you name a show on television that doesn’t have a gay character? I can’t. Even Roseanne has a trans kid. There is literally nothing without a gay storyline in it. I recently started watching The Imposters on Netflix about a group of con artists who lure men into marrying a woman who steals all their money. Several episodes in you find out she also married a woman! They usually wait until you’re hooked to throw the gay plot line in because they know that with as few as 4 percent of the population identifying as gay, the rest of us don’t care to watch gay love stories and wouldn’t willingly tune in.
Another hit show that had to throw in a gay subplot is This Is Us. They also did the trick where they get you hooked on many episodes where there is no gay stuff and then they hit you with it when you’re least expecting it. In this case, the gay character was so implausible I stopped watching. I just didn’t buy it. (And I’m glad I stopped watching because I heard Jack got killed by a crockpot. It doesn’t get worse than that.) If aliens landed tomorrow and only had network TV to figure out who were are, they’d think most of us were gayer than Liberace. And yes, gays should have interesting things to watch that they enjoy and that’s what capitalism provides in the form of the Logo channel, E! and Vice. (There are probably a lot more by now, I just don’t know what they are because I don’t go looking for gay programming. I’m simply not interested.)
There are so many shows with gay characters (even on the Disney Channel!) that Wikipedia has about eight pages filled with every character that is somewhere on the rainbow. We are not suffering from a lack of LGBTQWTF characters. We are on gay overload. They’re never satisfied. When is GLAAD ever glad? Maybe they should rename themselves SAAD. If this is what gay rights has come down to, harping over television shows that don’t have enough gay characters, I’d say the war is won. Go celebrate at your favorite bar with a bubble machine! You won! Straight people have no more shows! You’ve commandeered every single one and we’re not allowed to complain about it because “homophobia” or something.
If GLAAD (SAAD) gets their way and more gay characters show up in TV shows and movies, there’s only one outcome. Get woke, go broke. See canceled gay sitcoms One Big Happy, The McCarthys, Sean Saves the World, and Partners. Straight people (who are the uncontested majority of television and movie watchers) do not find gay things interesting or entertaining. It’s not personal—it’s like how most gay guys dread the moment a party bus pulls up and a bachelorette party stumbles into their club from somewhere in the suburbs. The guys in the bar aren’t buying them drinks or chatting them up or wishing for more drunken middle-aged women to show up night after night. They really just want them to go somewhere else and that makes all the sense in the world. Imagine if the gay club owners all decided that what you gay men out there need is more bachelorette parties! Soon there wouldn’t be a night you could go out that didn’t include some drunken bleached blonde telling you she’s hot for you if only you weren’t gay while she slops a cosmo on your shirt. How long would those bars be in business? This is how it feels watching TV while straight—and GLAAD wants more?
Entertainment outlets should cater to their audiences. Logo should cater to their mostly gay audience and ABC should cater to their mostly straight audience. Doing anything else will result in failure. Don’t count on the entertainment outlets to get that memo though. Diversity is our financial ruin strength!
I wonder which character in the upcoming misery that is the remake of Magnum P.I. will be gay? My bet is on the female Higgins.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member