(2 of 3)
Gay writers and producers "realize it's their responsibility [to create gay characters] because the straight guy down the hall isn't going to," says Scott Seomin, entertainment-media director for the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD).
Gay characters still account for only about 2% of TV's roster, and with scant exceptions, we generally see a lone gay character associating largely with straights, viewing pals' sexcapades from the sidelines with what-fools-these-breeders-be amusement. But if nothing else, gay and straight characters show a new openness, sophistication and realism, sometimes with the help of consultants; GLAAD worked with McCormack to refine Will after the show's pilot. ("No gay man had hair like Will's, really long in the back," jokes Seomin. "He looked like Jerry Seinfeld.") Certainly much of the biting banter and in-jokes of W&G--"I haven't seen a kiss that uncomfortable since Richard Gere and Jodie Foster in Sommersby"--would be unimaginable in the era of Three's Company's fairy jokes. Some shows even cultivate what you might call a gay sensibility. HBO's heterosexual (and how) sitcom Sex and the City regularly broaches sexual gray areas, taking the perspective, less broadly embraced among straights, that sexuality isn't either-or but a continuum. The Ally McBeal same-sex kiss episode, for all its easy titillation, takes the same view.
Gay content and gay characters--increasingly common accessories on shows aimed at trendy young adults--serve as a sort of coolness shorthand, bestowing hipness on their shows and audience, serving as a conduit to cred for the majority group, just as racial minorities have in the past. From Norman Mailer's White Negro we've gone to the Gay Hetero. As a side benefit, these characters allow networks to put affluent white boys on the air and call it diversity. (Indeed, the elderly animated pair Wally and Gus on the WB's Mission Hill are notable not so much for making out in the show's premiere as for proving that gay men don't vaporize after age 30.) But Spin City's Carter Heywood is the networks' only gay person of color, and we've scarcely seen working-class gays or bisexuals since Sandra Bernhard on Roseanne. Speaking of which, anybody remember lesbians? Judy Wieder, editor in chief of the gay-and-lesbian magazine The Advocate, says that although gay men's sexuality "seems to be more threatening to society in general than [that of] gay women," lesbians have largely been left out of TV's gay renaissance.