h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

More in the United States:

Xena: Warrior Princess first employed "lesbian subtext" about five years ago. Some gay fans watching the show saw Xena and Gabrielle as a couple, and the show's staff have slipped in numerous references to this belief. However, they still refuse to officially confirm or deny whether the characters are actually a couple.

Ellen, a short-lived comedy show, portrayed a woman who turned out to be a lesbian through and beyond her coming out. The ratings spiked for the first few episodes after the coming out blitz, then fell back down again because the show basically wasn't very funny. It was cancelled at the end of the season.

Will and Grace is another comedy, where Will is a gay man and Grace is his heterosexual roommate. It's been very successful so far, although some complain that the network seems adverse to portraying Will in a sexual/romantic way.

Buffy: The Vampire Slayer has decided this year to make Willow, a witch and supporting cast member, bisexual. Her boyfriend (Oz) broke up with her last year. She spent this year recovering and then slowly falling in love with fellow witch Tara. Oz returned at the end of the season, only to be turned away by Willow.

Boys Don't Cry was a movie released last year which featured the story of a male-to-female trans person. Also, American Beauty featured a gay couple who were portrayed as the only relatively normal people in their community.

I can think of three other older American movies. One is The Streets of Philadelphia, which is a positive portrayal of lawyer with AIDS. The second is The Bird Cage, which is a comedy about a gay couple and their struggles to remain in the closet despite one of them being a drag queen. And the third is Threesome, which portrays a straight man, a straight woman, and a gay man who end up rooming together in college and form a brief poly relationship.

Cheers for these. The Streets of Philedelpia was just Philedelphia here in the UK. I'll get these up soonish.

Actually, you are right. The movie was Philadelphia. The Streets of Philadelphia was the name of Bruce Springstein's themesong for the movie. My mistake.

NP I just thought it may have been named differently in the States some of these things are.

Michael and Ben in Queer As Folk USA. They disprove the myth athat all gay mne are promiscuous and that we CAN have loving stable relationships like heteros do.

It is good to see 'normal'(sic) gay characters, though I don't know how popular QAF USA is in the straight community and therefore how influential the portrayal is.

BTW, while a few of us have tried bringing M2M2 back to life, you seem to be singlehandedly resurrecting M2M2's backwaters. Top work!

Have you come here from another BBC/DNA board? Nobody on H2G2 can leave you a message etc until you write something in your personal space, but you might not be able to do that without re-registering. I might be wrong.

I used to be a member of the BBC One Life gay MB but it was removed three months ago and we were told to post on a merged board. However, all the old users have left because of the disrespect we were shown as a group of gays, not least becuase it has become little more than a chatroom for teenagers, and we have since set up our own external messageboard called Twolife which is thriving bigtime with all but one of the former BBC gay MB users posting frequently. However, one former BBC gay MB user, Josh, has been single-handedly campaigning on the One Life replacement for the return of the gay MB and has received a load of absue from the heteros (I did join briefly using a differrent username but was simiarly hounded away) and one of the hosts who is probably sick to death of him and us suggested m2m2 and signposted it a few days ago as I'd never heard of it before and would have has no idea it was even here. This is why I am resurrecting old covnersations because this is my first time here.

I must admit that it has taken me a while to udnerstand how this works and only worke dout how to create a new topic a few minutes ago. Therefore, goodness knows about messages and everything else that goes with h2g2.

I would imagine that QAF USA is watched only by gay men and lesbians and is shown on a pay channel in the USA and would never get on the networks. That said, it portrays us as a diverse lot who have the same issues as heteros do and doesn't shy away from society's homophobia either and I think reflects gay life in general quite well due to their portrayal of a happy, sorted and stable couple which happens to be a same sex partnership.

I'd been on H2G2 several months before finding M2M2 (I came to H2G2 through the Douglas Adams thing). We're trying to drum up a bit more interest - if you could point others in this direction we'd be remarkably pleased!

I'm not 100% sure but if you leave a message here: A214796 someone might pop along to help you. It's the ACE's page - they welcome newbies, but probably haven't noticed you as you're not new to DNA (the BBC messageboard thingy - which started here!), just new to H2G2.

Plenty of people have got a beef with the BBC's message boards - be it boards closing or technical problems (the latter largely caused by the very busy 606 boards). Unless the license fee goes up with a specific 'online' funding element there's not much anyone can do about it, including the (very frustrated) people in charge. There's been quite a lot of disgruntlement voiced around here over the last few days...

...but at least it's here in the first place.

Cor, talk about off topic!

Back on topic: in order for gay characters to have any impact on the masses they have to be in regular programming and regular characters who just happen to be gay. Still quite rare.

Isn't odd that, despite an ostensibly tolerant, open, objective world, a gay comment can kill a conversation stone dead:

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very very true. I actually asked if it was considered acceptable to discuss gay relationships on that relationships MB given that I'd never ever seen a gay relationship ever mentioned. I was told oh yes, of course but when I challenged things a bit further I was told that I am being heterophobic and uptight. Do have a read of that thread and please comment as it has over 100 replies.

I think that when I mentioned the word gay and that nobody replied underlines that really it is for hetero relationships only and thast our rewlationships are considered inferior to theirs and should never be discussed.

One thing it is NOT is a tollerant, open and obective world when it comes to homosexuality and gay life in general.

That is very true and that's the point. gay men on Tv are basically camp thigns like Graham Norton and oaul O'Grady who are seen as non-threatening entertainment. However, to have an openly non cap gay man on TV is unheard of, probably because we are still a threat to society and that we could not be trusted say, to read the news.

I did mention M2M2 on the gay messageboards I moderate and we shall see if anyone chosoes to participate here. Mind you, given that the BBC went out of its way to close the gay MB then if this became too popular they'd probably close this down too.