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Monday, October 12, 2009

Gay Characters On The Soaps

When I first started my blog, I did several posts about how several shows were handling gay characters. Those posts were: AMC - Bianca Is Back, L Television (01/17/09), L Television (02/20/09). I thought I would do an update. Bianca is no longer on AMC and that story line just kind of died out. One Life To Live is currently taking on the topic of gay marriage. The storyline started out with one of the characters, a police officer, Oliver Fish, (played by Scott Evans) coming out to his parents. The actor's real life mother, Lisa Evans, played his mother on the show. It was your typical 'parents refusing to accept their gay son' storyline. Then they brought in this storyline of Dorian and Viki both running for mayor. I missed a few days, then all of a sudden Viki was touting how she had LGBT staffers on her campaign. Then Dorian had to join in and hired a new Campaign Manager, a lesbian. The next thing you know, Dorian is making speeches of her support for gay marriage and attending a rally saying that she was going to marry her partner, the lesbian Campaign Manager. Of course Dorian's character isn't a lesbian, she just an opportunist who has to one up Viki, and what better way to do it than to say that she herself is marrying a woman.

Ok, first of all kudos to ABC for taking on the 'coming out to your parents' topic and kudos to them for having the characters include gay marriage in their mayoral campaigns. However, once again, I'm not really happy with where this is going. One the one hand, it's great to think that someone would 'pretend' to be a lesbian in order to further their political career. On the other, this seems like it's going to make a mockery of gay marriage like I Know Pronounce You Chuck & Larry.

So what do you think of this storyline on One Life To Live?




Lola's Diner
©2008-2009

1 comment:

StaceyC4 said...

Okay, I don't watch the soaps anymore but I have to agree with you on this. I think the topic of coming out to your parents is an important one to portray. But the pretending to be a lesbian storyline does make it possible to open itself to mockery.

On a more serious note, I have a question for you: My son works at the local supermarket as a cashier. One of the baggers is gay and keeps hitting on my son. My son has explained to this boy that he is not gay and to please stop. The problem is that he's complained to his boss and nothing is being done because they feel like it is a "tricky" situation - like this other boy would be being discriminated against because he's gay. I say sexual harassment is sexual harassment. I'm just wondering what your thoughts are on this because I know you to be open and honest on all things and particularly about being gay - have you ever encountered such a situation? I hope I'm not being obnoxious or offensive, but I do really value your opinion.

 
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