Shades of gay: TV's come a long way since 'Ellen,' & has more to go

WALNUT CREEK, Calif. - Berkeley resident Leesa Tori has no problem recalling, with vivid clarity, that television moment on April 30, 1997, when Ellen DeGeneres spoke into an airport public-address system and announced to all the world, "I'm gay."

The coming-out scene on the ABC sitcom "Ellen" was a watershed event in television history and left Tori, a lesbian, beaming with pride.

"That was so incredibly important," Tori said. "It was just huge. She was my hero."

More than 10 years later, gay viewers - and anyone who values diversity in their pop-cultural fare - can take pride in the fact that gay characters on television are no longer such a big-deal novelty.

According to a recent study by the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, broadcast television featured 16 gay and bisexual regular characters in prime-time shows at the start of the fall season. That's more than double the seven of a year ago.

The depictions run the gamut, from a bisexual woman on "Bones" to the short-lived same-sex female romance on "Grey's Anatomy" and a gay marriage on "Brothers & Sisters."

Nineteen recurring characters (those who appear only from time to time) on broadcast television are gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender. Combine the regular and recurring characters, and it's the most that GLAAD has counted during its 13 years of monitoring the networks.

Moreover, when consideration is given to reality shows, daytime dramas and gay-oriented cable networks, it becomes clear that never before have gay story lines been so prominent on television.

"Naturally, we want to see ourselves represented and have our stories told," said GLAAD president Neil G. Giuliano. "But this [broadening representation] is also important because we know that images on TV and in the movies have a lot of power and influence. They can go a long way toward helping others embrace the LGBT community with love and acceptance."

To that end, Giuliano is pleased to see not only more gay characters on the small screen, but more "fully developed" characters with "substantial depth" to them. In other words, characters who don't serve simply as gimmicks or window dressing or the butt of jokes as many gay depictions have done in the past.

He pointed to the ABC family drama "Brothers & Sisters," in which one of the main characters - Kevin Walker (Matthew Rhys) - has participated in a same-sex wedding ceremony with Scotty Wandell, a character played by openly gay actor Luke Macfarlane. It is believed to be prime time's first gay wedding involving series regulars.

On the same show, Kevin's uncle, Saul Holden (Ron Rifkin), last season officially came out in his 60s, after acknowledging that he had led a life filled with regret.

"That's a very genuine situation - someone coming out late in life and dealing with all that entails," Giuliano said. "It's a great story to be told."

ABC, which GLAAD credits as being the top broadcast network when it comes to LGBT inclusion, also introduced a fledgling romance between female doctors - Callie Torres (Sara Ramirez) and Erica Hahn (Brooke Smith) - on its No. 1-rated drama, "Grey's Anatomy."

"That's another very wonderful and real story of women learning to understand their same-sex attraction," said Giuliano.

The "Grey's Anatomy" plot line is also an example of television's willingness to reach out to the LGBT community. Before the season, series creator Shonda Rhimes met with representatives of GLAAD to discuss the characters and the direction they would take.

"What I love is, we sat down and talked about women who figure out that they're lesbians later in life and what that means," Rhimes told reporters during television's summer press tour. "And we really were able to find some really great, humorous and serious emotional stuff to play that's going to feel really interesting and also affect their lives in the hospital."

Some of the most interesting developments in gay-related television continue to occur in other genres and programming platforms. Reality TV, for example, has long been at the forefront when it comes to compelling LGBT personalities, including this season's inclusion of Isis, a transgender contestant on "America's Next Top Model," and Lance Bass, a gay contestant, on "Dancing with the Stars."

But even with the progress made in recent years, television still has a lot of work to do when it comes to presenting well-rounded gay story lines and being generally inclusive. The recent GLAAD report noted that CBS didn't have any shows this fall with regular characters who are gay (although the CBS daytime drama ""As the World Turns"" features a gay relationship). And since the days of ""Ellen"" and ""Will & Grace,"" there have been no scripted series actually built around gay characters.

Moreover, gay story lines continue to be mostly the dominion of white men.

"We need more people of color, that's for sure," said Giuliano, citing Callie on "Grey's Anatomy," Angela Montenegro (Michaela Conlin) on "Bones" and Oscar Martinez (Oscar Nunez) on "The Office" as being among the notable few. *