I saw a man kissing another man on television last night. It wasn’t on HBO late night, or a documentary on PBS. It wasn’t an offering from the Out network, or the latest cutting edge indie on the Sundance. It was on Fox.
After it happened, I reached out and gave my wife a little fist bump. The gesture almost seemed too much, because the moment in the show was so casual. Actually, the moment wasn’t casual. It was an important coming together of two characters who have been circling a romantic relationship for a long time. The kiss was big, but not because it was two men.
Perhaps people under 30 may not understand my surprise (if so, that’s a wonderful thing).
Some history:
While I am not myself gay, my mother is. Even in the liberal northern California enclave where I grew up, homophobia was pervasive and largely accepted. When I was just 11 years old, I went door-to-door with my mother’s partner to help defeat a proposition that would have forbidden gay people to teach in schools.
On TV at the time there was one gay character, a lone outlier played by Billy Crystal on Soap. The idea of his having a real romantic relationship, however, was laughable. They would sooner have lit him on fire than share a romantic kiss with another man. And after him, it was many years before any other gay characters were regulars on a TV show, particularly on network TV.
But there it was. Last night. Two men kissing. Bringing their long flirtation to an end by doing what one does when bringing a long flirtation to an end – kiss. It was so simple, and all the more revolutionary for being so.
Even more revolutionary was where it happened, the Fox network. Suffice it to say, Fox doesn’t give two shits about gay rights. Given it’s rabidly right wing political bent, one can safely assume Fox would rather not ever see two men kissing on television, much less on their network.
Yet there it was. And why? Because they can make money on it, which is (more or less) the only reason any network does anything.
This mercenary motive of Fox’s is, in fact, great, great news. If a company utterly in the mainstream of American society believes it can make money out of a show where men kiss, then a battle that seemed absolutely nowhere just 30 years ago is a long way towards being won.
The upshot is - two men kissed, and nobody cared. And that is a triumph.
I don’t mean to belittle all that remains to be done. The battle for the rights of gay Americans is still fiercely contested. The ways in which those rights are infringed upon is appalling and must be rectified. But watching Glee last night, I thought maybe the tipping point had already been passed.
Gay marriage as the great conservative scare tactic is, apparently, on its way out. A recent poll among young evangelicals suggest that, even for them, the most rabidly homophobic part of our culture, homosexuality is not much of an issue. If that’s true, can it be too long before homophobia is in our rear view mirror?
Whether that ends up being true or not, it is important to take a minute to realize how far the battle has come, just in the last 30 years. It is near miraculous.
Fist bump.