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The article reflects on the television image of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transsexual (GLBT) people. For too many years when gay men and lesbians appeared on the nightly news, their lives were illustrated by woefully archaic film clips of seedy gay bars or seminaked parade revelers. Even through the late 1990s it used to amaze me that journalists could yammer about employment legislation or do not ask, do not tell while showing film clips of drag queens in hot pink beehive hairdos and spiked heels. But lo and behold, after a particularly vicious cycle of video images surrounding headlines about gays in the military, hate crimes, the antigay Federal Marriage Amendment, and same-sex unions, television news has started to clean up its act. We are now getting glimpses of actual, identifiable gay men and lesbians saying sensible things into the camera or being filmed in the sunlight. Our new TV image may, to borrow a well-worn phrase, look like gay America, but does it now exclude the drag queen heroes and social renegades who gave rise to the Stonewall revolution? While the very real images of everyday gays are critical to our upcoming legal battles for state-by-state equality, I hope they do not result in a disappearing act for our entire GLBT culture.

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p72-72 1p