Gay TV and Straight America

Introduction: The Importance of Gay-Themed TV

Introduction The Importance of Gay-Themed TV I honestly have to say this is the first time in my life I’ve understood the culture wars in the sense of being a guy who lives in New York and being helpless about the ability to control whatever political destiny occurs in my own area, and I realized it’s sort of their revenge for us controlling the TV. . . . It’s them saying we’re not crazy about Will & Grace, so here’s what we’re going to do about it. —Jon Stewart, The Daily Show, November 3, 2004 The day after the 2004 presidential election, a disillusioned Jon Stewart and his guest, New York Senator Charles Schumer, tried to figure out how George W. Bush could have won. Given the major issues dominating headlines at the time, the suggestion that a prime-time sitcom had helped put Bush over the top was both comically absurd and strikingly on the mark. For months, pundits had predicted that the election would hinge on the economy, homeland security, and the war in Iraq. In exit polls, however, a surprisingly large number of voters identified moral values as the issue they were most concerned about. According to post-election analysis, these so-called values voters were struggling, middle-class, middle-Americans, scared less by the chaos in the Middle East or by the employment vagaries of the global economy than by the supposed moral decline of American culture.Atop their list of threats were gays, lesbians, and the big-city politicians, activist judges, and liberal Hollywood elites working to destroy America’s moral center. Trying to understand why voters whose economic and political interests were often ill-served by Bush’s policies chose to reelect him, Stewart could only conclude:“It really seems like none of it trumped the idea of two dudes kissing.” Given the prominence of gay political and cultural visibility at the time, it isn’t surprising that gay rights served as such a powerful wedge issue for Bush and the Republicans. During the summer of 2003, the politics of sexual identity seemed inescapable.That June, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Texas’s antigay sodomy law in a widely covered landmark decision heralded as the most important civil rights verdict in decades—one that might pave the way for gay marriage.With gay rights on everyone’s minds, the divisive election of 1 Becker_Introduction_Pgs-1-12.qxd 10/10/2005 11:45 AM Page 1 the non-celibate, gay Reverend Gene Robinson as Anglican bishop of New Hampshire became headline news later that summer. Meanwhile, marketers and feature-story writers became fixated on the “metrosexual”—a supposedly new breed of straight man who comfortably adopted the consumer habits of his appearance-obsessed gay counterpart. Profiting from the metrosexuality buzz, Bravo’s Queer Eye for the Straight Guy became the most talked-about show of the summer television season.The Fab Five seemed to be everywhere, bringing good taste, good hair, and good quips to America’s gay-friendly straight men. And at the end of the summer, viewers watched “married couple” Reichen and Chip win CBS’s Amazing Race 4. Images of “married” gay and lesbian couples would become even more common in 2004 as the debate over same-sex marriage intensified. By February , the Massachusetts Supreme Court ruled that the state constitution required full and equal marriage rights for gays and lesbians, making it clear that samesex couples would be able to get legally married there soon. Later that month, in defiance of California state law, city officials in San Francisco began issuing marriage licenses to gay and lesbian couples, and millions of Americans watched as hundreds of same-sex couples camped out overnight in a carnivalesque atmosphere of civil disobedience. Resistance to such moves proved strong, however , culminating in calls for an amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would limit marriage to heterosexual couples—a call that President Bush supported. And on November 2, voters in eleven states passed antigay marriage amendments to their state constitutions. This book is primarily about the political and cultural dynamics at play behind the rise of gay-themed programming on U.S. network television in the 1990s. However, I start with Jon Stewart’s comments about the 2004 election (and conclude the book by examining Queer Eye, metrosexuality, and the recent gay marriage debate) in order to suggest that the story I tell about the 1990s is highly relevant for understanding American...