March 3,

on the airoff the press

Finally, two men kiss on prime time network TV

by John Graves

Gay male kisses finally made it to prime time network TV last week-twice. The most publicized one happened on NBC's Will and Grace, which took a poke at its own network's censorship of "public display of gay affection."

Will and his friend Jack, angered when

JILL WILL

In this version, the messy Goodman rooms with a straight divorced dad who's a tidy fussbudget. Although Goodman's publicist told the magazine that “sexual orientation is not going to be the focus of the show, Entertainment Weekly says, “Will and Grace, watch your backs."

This killer won't drive us out

The real first kiss: Richard Spedale, left, and Brian Thornton on the June 28, 1999 Today show.

NBC cuts a scene of two gay men kissing

Gay people have finally made an appearance on The X-Files. In an episode based on the reality series Cops, FBI agents Mulder and Scully interview Steve and Edie, an older AfricanAmerican gay male couple, while being taped by a Cops crew during their investigation of a series of murders.

I was put off at first by the over-the-top flamboyancy of Edie, but when Mulder and Scully suggest the couple go into hiding to protect themselves from the killer, Steve tells them, "We are not going to be driven from our home of seventeen years."

from their favorite sitcom, decide to take Scruggs' column will be missed

action and protest. Rebuffed by a closeted gay NBC executive when they take their complaint to the network, Will and Jack staged a very "public display of gay affection" in front of Al Roker's national audience, during his street interview segment for the Today show.

The Today show kiss was based on a real event: Former Clevelanders Richard Spedale and Brian Thornton did that very thing last June, to protest the lack of a realistic gay male relationship on Will and Grace.

Although this Will and Grace episode was reported to be the first time there was a kiss between two gay men on prime time TV, my colleagues Jim and Dave tell me Fox's Ally McBeal beat them to the punch. That kiss came in a dream Ally had after she turned away from a judge she was interested in when he came out to her as bisexual. She dreamed of the judge in a romantic kiss with another man.

Although both networks may have taken a bold step, it should be pointed out that there is still no ongoing gay relationship in any network program. In fact, since the demise of Ellen, the only long-term lesbian relationship on broadcast TV is Xena and Gabrielle.

A beer and sports-lovin' gay dad?

Former Roseanne costar John Goodman will play a "suds-swilling, sports-loving, gay divorced dad" in an as yet unnamed sitcom for Fox next season. According to Entertainment Weekly, Fox has ordered 23 episodes of the show, which promises to be a gay take on the Odd Couple.

The Cleveland Plain Dealer's very gaysupportive African-American columnist AfiOdelia E. Scruggs has left her thrice-weekly column and will report on minority affairs for the paper.

Although she will bring a good sensitivity to gay issues in her reporting, her muchneeded persuasive opinions and understanding of our issues in her column will be sorely -missed. I wonder if they'll let her cover this year's Pride march and festival in June.

The president is better than his staff

NBC's White House drama West Wing has had a long-running subplot about the behind-the-scenes politicking for and against lesbian-gay civil rights and hate crime legislation.

While the liberal president is portrayed as generally gay-supportive, some of his political advisers try to appease conservatives by limiting White House support of pro-gay initiatives.

When a couple whose son was murdered in a gay bashing are brought in to make a public statement in support of gay-inclusive hate crime legislation, the White House staff sends them home. It seems the couple say they will also make a statement that they cannot support the president unless he will back full civil rights for lesbigay people.

Most recently, a wealthy gay man cancels a multi-million dollar political fundraiser at the last minute when the president's aide refuses to discuss the possibility of the president ordering the military to allow lesbians and gays to serve openly.

A squeaky-clean look at 'don't ask'

The CBS military law drama JAG has finally done a show about gays in the military, in an episode that gives a rosy view of how the "don't ask, don't tell" policy is supposed to work.

A Marine gunnery sergeant gets into an altercation with a gay man who accidentally bumped into him outside a gay bar. Another man, a sailor who had been in the bar in "civvies," jumps into the fray to defend the gay man when he recognizes the sergeant as a shipmate.

The sailor is accused of assault and goes to a court-martial. The Judge Advocate General lawyers seem to go out of their way to avoid violating the "don't ask, don't tell" policy, ignoring an attempt by the homophobic sergeant to out his shipmate by phoning one of the JAG lawyers posing as the sailor's gay lover.

Unlike real life, the military was portrayed as squeaky-clean and even gaysupportive, while a civilian prosecutor that appears later is portrayed as an insincere, vote-hungry opportunist out to garner lesbigay support for his re-election.

Nice to hear us in mayor's speech

February was Black History Month and it was certainly gratifying this year to see so many lesbigay organizations offering events honoring the historical contributions of lesbigay African-Americans.

It was especially nice to see Cleveland Mayor Mike White's very gay-inclusive Year 2000 address, which called for expansion and strengthening of the city's already gayinclusive anti-discrimination ordinance, published in full in the African-American weekly Cleveland Life.

Don't pee in our face, Mr. Caesar

Powell Caesar, an anti-gay AfricanAmerican columnist whose column used to in the Call & Post, started off Black appear History Month on a sour note, with an insulting homophobic diatribe in the Cleveland suburban Sun papers where his column now regularly appears.

Caesar started off his January 27 column with an anecdote about his father saying, "When I was growing up and tried to pull the wool over my father's eyes, he'd turn to me

Mitchell S. Gross Attorney-at-Law

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and say in that deep voice of his, 'Don't pee in my face and tell me it's rainwater'."

He then used that anecdote as an insult, insinuating that our fight for our rights are, in effect, "peeing" in his face and the face of all God-fearing Americans.

Caesar attempted to show that he was not anti-gay by saying that gays and lesbians should not face discrimination. He wrote on however, saying, "What I won't abide is a self-interest group or their advocates telling me that homosexual unions should be viewed in the same manner as heterosexual unions... I get insulted when gay rights activists attempt to ram down my throat that these unions are just as normal as a straight couple and need to be sanctioned. At this juncture, I'm in the 'don't ask, don't tell' mode when it comes to the issue of same-sex unions and related matters."

Well I'm sorry, brother Caesar, behind those "same-sex unions and related matters" are our real families and we will fight to protect them. Although you and some of my other African-American brothers and sisters seem to deny a link between this struggle to protect our families, I remember our black history when the courts decided we as African-Americans were only 2/3 human and therefore were not entitled to the rights of the white majority.

I am an old coot enough to remember when those same feelings were directed at civil rights activists, when mainstream America didn't want to see African-Americans at all if they could help it, much less listen to our issues. And I remember that it was not so long ago when interracial marriage was against the law in many states, including Ohio.

Get real Caesar, to this old non-dinosaur your arguments and complaints sound just like those self-proclaimed liberals who denied they were racist by proclaiming, “Some of my best friends are black (or gay)."

John Graves is the producer and host of Gaywaves, an LGBT public affairs show on Cleveland's WRUW 91.1 FM Fridays at 7 pm, and at http://radio.cwru.edu. Dave Haskell, Jim McGrattan and Kim Jones also contribute to this column.

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