Gay, but not too gay

The sixth episode of Teen Wolf’s third season whipped up a scandal in the United States. To be honest it was fairly shocking. A boy nearly sawed himself in half with a chainsaw, another boy almost drowned himself in a bath-tub and the whole thing was set in a motel that kept a record of the number of people who had committed suicide while staying there. And then there was all the racy snogging. And gratuitous shirtless scenes. Except, that wasn’t what was controversial. Two boys kissed! Are you hyperventilating yet? America was!

The fact is that the gay-kiss is one of TV’s few remaining taboos. Indeed, considering Teen Wolf’s straight couples have a decent snog session each episode, the fact Ethan and Danny make out for about a minute and half really shouldn’t be a problem. Sadly it is. True there have been some successful gay couples on television, with Naomi and Emily from Skins’s second generation immediately springing to mind, but they lack the global exposition afforded to larger US shows. Pretty Little Liars in 2010 won praise for making one of the four series-leads, Emily, lesbian, and although her relationship is treated exactly the same as the other three girls, the intimacy of the relationship she shares with Paige is dramatically reduced. To be fair, Emily didn’t get off to a great start with her first girlfriend being a drug addict and getting murdered in the second season finale, but the other three girls do kiss their boyfriends a lot more, whereas Emily and Paige can go episodes without any contact.

It’s also disturbing to note that both True Blood and Game of Thrones, arguably the most graphically sexualised shows on television, won’t shirk from transmitting graphic rape scenes, but won’t even allow a gay couple a kiss on screen. For any comparable portrayal of gay couples to straight ones, you have to look to LGBT shows like Queer As Folk or The L Word since the depiction in mainstream television is massively unrealistic. The two shows arguably most responsible for raising the profile of LGBT characters aren’t without their flaws either.

Modern Family and Glee are as guilty of self-censoring as teen-shows Pretty Little Liars, Skins and 90210 were when they dealt with their own gay storylines. Cam and Mitchell’s lack of on-screen affection might be explained away as Mitchell being afraid of public intimacy, but when you’ve gone as far as displaying a stable gay couple who have adopted a child, the lack of kissing is frankly bizarre. As for Glee, while Finn and Rachel might have made out multiple times an episode in the  first four seasons, the show’s key gay and lesbian couples, Blaine and Kurt, and Santana and Brittany, can only show a few smooches through the show in comparison. TV has come a long way, but there’s no reason to be content with the current frankly unequal situation.