The Gays of Summer

[Penelope]

From TV Guide (SPOILERISH for Y&R fans):

The Gays of Summer
by Michael Logan July 02, 2009 12:14 PM EST

What’s behind the gay explosion in daytime drama? This time last year, As the World Turns’ Luke and Noah were the only same-sex couple — in fact, the only gays — to be found on a network soap. Now, Guiding Light has a latent-lesbian romance between Olivia and Natalia, and One Life to Live has kicked off a plot about a secret past tryst involving Fish and Kyle. All My Children recently made history when its suffering sapphos Bianca and Reese said “I do” in daytime’s first legal gay marriage.

That ain’t all. ATWT is adding Mason, an out-and-proud college professor. GL’s town mayor, Doris, is a closeted lesbian. And last month on The Young and the Restless, the seemingly hetero Adam seduced gay lawyer Rafe. Now, in another Y&R development, Thom Bierdz’s presumed-dead character, Phillip, is about to admit that he faked his demise because he couldn’t stand to live a lie. Yep, he’s gay, too.

“What’s going on in soaps these days is a very cool reflection of how far mainstream America has come in accepting gays and lesbians,” says Bierdz, who is openly gay now but wasn’t when he last played Phillip 20 years ago. (He details his painful years in the closet in his moving, award-winning memoir Forgiving Troy, available on amazon.com.) “Being able to play gay on Y&R is the main reason I wanted to come back to the show,” he says. “Gay people are just like straight people, and that’s what I hope to show with Phillip. He’s not a cartoon, he’s not a stereotype. The guy certainly has issues. But being gay? That’s no big deal.”

No one in Genoa City thinks it’s a big deal, either — so far anyway. Says Bierdz: “In almost every script I use the word ‘gay’ and none of the characters has a problem with it, which is so funny because I totally thought somebody in town would be homophobic. [Head writer] Maria Bell just jumped over that, and that is a shock, man! But I see the thinking: If Mrs. Chancellor doesn’t have a problem with Phillip being gay, if Esther doesn’t have a problem with it, maybe the viewers won’t either.” Adds Bierdz: “For years, the soaps have been afraid of the sponsors and the audience. It looks like those days are over.”

Are they? “It certainly feels like there’s a sea change, but is it going to stick? That remains to be seen,” says Michael Jensen, editor of AfterElton.com, a site that tracks gay material in film and TV. One thing’s certain, Jensen notes: “ATWT got attention literally around the world because of Luke and Noah. You can’t buy that kind of publicity. There’s no question the rest of the soaps noticed that.”

Jensen suspects that “part of what’s going on here is that soaps want younger viewers and the younger generation is so much more accepting of gay issues — in fact, it’s a non-issue for them. Older viewers who might be turned off by these stories are of a little less import to the shows. To survive, soaps need to expand their audience.”

Jensen says his site gets increasing feedback that “straight women are really into gay men, and specifically gay romantic storylines. There’s a whole host of theories as to why that is, but it certainly exists for a pretty hefty segment of the female audience.”

ATWT exec producer Chris Goutman credits the success of the “Nuke” romance to “the fact that it’s about two human beings — rather than two gay human beings — who represent what young people are going through these days. We tell their love story as we would any other couple’s.”

Not quite. It took Noah and Luke months to kiss and months more to hit the sack. But the outrageous delay may well have been what made them a mainstream media sensation. “If other soaps are getting on the bandwagon now, it’s because they saw that [Nuke] did get attention,” Goutman says. “But we didn’t do it by getting on a soap box. We weren’t trying to be political. We didn’t do it for ratings. To tell you the truth, we had no idea it would be successful.”

GL’s Otalia story has also taken its sweet time — there’s yet to be a second kiss after Olivia and Natalia’s first rather weird, forced (yet strangely hot) liplock a few months back. Signs of affection between the ladies are rare (moony-eyed looks, arms around waists, that sort of thing) and while they’ve talked about having sex some day, they won’t be taking that step soon. Natalia is now pregnant with Frank’s kid and the actress who plays her, Jessica Leccia, has left the soap on maternity leave. It remains to be seen if GL will satisfy the Otalia fans with something — anything — physical when Leccia returns to the show and GL ends its run.

Still, this unrealistically chaste saga is fascinating, fabulously acted and very welcome. “I’ve gotten response from fans all over the world who are so grateful to GL for telling this story,” says Emmy winner Crystal Chappell, who plays Olivia. “People want something different. It’s time to be bolder. There’s a feeling in soaps that all the plots have been done, and that’s so not the case.”

The folks at OLTL think they’ve hit on a fresh gay twist. “In telling the love story of Fish and Kyle, Kyle has to get over the fact that Fish is pretending he’s not gay, and that’s something really new and interesting to explore — a journey we haven’t tackled before,” says Sue Johnson, the ABC programming VP who oversees OLTL and AMC.

“Soaps have a history of exploring social issues, and there’s been a lot of progress where gay issues are concerned. When we wanted Bianca to kiss Lena on AMC, we had to jump through hoops to make it happen. It seems people are more accepting of gays now. Yet, at the same time, you look at what’s happened with Proposition 8 and you go, whoa, we haven’t come as far as we’d like to think we’ve come.”

In fact, two daytime stars recently vacated their roles allegedly due to their objections over gay subject matter. Actor Chris Engen quit the part of Adam on Y&R just prior to taping the aforementioned seduction scene and was replaced by Michael Muhney. On OLTL, Patricia Mauceri was replaced as matriarch Carlotta Vega after the veteran actress took issue with comedic scenes in which her character finds a book, How Tell Your Parents That You’re Gay, and thinks it belongs to her son, Christian. (The book actually belongs to his roommate Fish.) The script called for Carlotta to be understanding and supportive of her son’s sexuality. Mauceri, who is said to have had religious objections to the story twist, went to OLTL exec producer Frank Valentini and told him she wouldn’t perform it as written and that she had reworked a significant amount of the dialogue. Valentini refused to accept Mauceri’s changes and quickly replaced her with actress Saundra Santiago. Both Engen and Mauceri have since been pilloried on several gay-centric Web sites.

Daytime’s real triumph in the representation of gay issues and characters will come “when all this ceases to be newsworthy,” says ABC’s Johnson. “We’re getting a lot of press for our gay storyline and we like that, but it’s nice to think we’ll soon see the day when this is no longer a big deal.”

It was Eden Riegel’s AMC character, Bianca, who launched this modern gay age when she came out in 2000. “The idea that man-crazy Erica Kane had a lesbian daughter was very shocking back then,” Riegel recalls. “Now people are starting to realize this isn’t a marginalized issue — it’s a human issue. For a lot of viewers, Bianca was the first gay person they ever knew. She opened a lot of hearts and minds. And once they knew her, many of those viewers became more open to embracing other gay characters and enjoying their stories. Bottom line, these stories are all about the same thing. They’re about love – and who doesn’t root for love to win out in the end?”