There have been some positive contributors to the mainstream media who have heightened or even merely been the first to acknowledge the Lesbigay community. Conversely, there have also been negative portrayals of the same community in the same media, as well as contributions which have been divisive. Here is a selection of media portrayals of LGBT people and what they have (or haven't) done in the name of equality.

Some Notable Landmarks

Firsts

• The first interracial gay sex scene in mainstream cinema was in Film4's My Beautiful Laundrette starring Daniel Day Lewis, Gordon Warnecke and Saeed Jaffrey in 1985.
• The first lesbian kiss in a UK soap occurred on Brookside in 1993, while the first gay kiss happened on Eastenders in 1989. Gay or lesbian relationships have now been portrayed in all the main UK soaps - even the long-running Radio 4 soap The Archers has featured a long-term gay couple.
• Even children's TV has covered gay issues: in 1987, part of the BBC's output for teenagers included the coming-out drama Two of Us which, in spite of a tacked-on 'choose straight' ending and being broadcast late at night, was considered ground-breaking and controversial. Seven years later, Byker Grove included a coming-out storyline, culminating in Noddy Fishwick kissing his friend Gary at the back of a cinema and eventually finding love - all broadcast in the early evening this time round!
• Queer as Folk was a drama about three people finding themselves, the three main characters just happened to be gay and their lives revolved around the gay scene in Manchester. It caused ructions¹ by portraying under-age gay sex in the first episode; however it portrayed the gay community in a predominately positive light. The series was later adapted for US audiences (set in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania) and ran for five seasons between 2000 and 2005, initially following the UK version's storylines but eventually diverging from the original and producing original storyarchs.
• The first prime time kiss between two male gay characters on US Television happened in 2000 when Jack finally got to actually be in a physical relationship in Dawson's Creek² with Ethan.
• Heat magazine, which launched in 1999, is a mainstream entertainment publication for a young audience, yet it has continually been very supportive of gay friendly issues (including being the first magazine to publicly support the series Queer As Folk).
• Tom Hanks received what is believed to be the first Oscar for a portrayal of a gay man; he played Andrew Beckett in Philadelphia, a gay man in a stable relationship dying of AIDS.

Film4

Film4 was an offshoot of Channel 4: to meet their remit of alternative programming, Channel 4 set up this film company to provide support to small and alternative British film-makers. Since 1982 many films have been produced and many have featured gay characters or storylines in a positive way. These include My Beautiful Laundrette (1985), Jeffrey (1995), Beautiful Thing (1996) and arguably the most successful British film Four Weddings and a Funeral (1993), which featured the immortal line:

All these years we've been single and proud of it and never noticed that two of us were, in effect, married all this time³.

The 2000 Academy Awards

These were dubbed the homophile Oscars because of the number of nominees that had gay connections or themes. Boys Don't Cry and American Beauty both had prominent gay characters behaving normally compared to those around them.

Some Recent Portrayals

• The L Word - made for the same TV network as the US version of Queer As Folk, this series follows the lives of a group of lesbian and bi women and their friends, families and lovers in Los Angeles. While it has been successful (it has been picked up for a fifth season) and credited for bringing gay culture to mainstream audiences, it has been criticised for a lack of realism and for being deliberately targeted towards straight men more than lesbians.
• In July 2007, Channel 4 marked the 40th anniversary of the decriminalisation of homosexuality with its 40 Years Out season, which included A Very British Sex Scandal (a documentary/dramatisation of the 1954 Montagu Trial and Wolfenden Committee) and the controversial drama Clapham Junction.