Did you hear someone's pitching—fairly seriously, must be, since we're hearing about it—a new Star Trek series? And apparently it'll have an openly gay character. All I'll say about it in a serious tone is, the NBC networks have already been trying that, and their token homosexuals—lipstick lesbians and bland, straitlaced young gents to a one—are much less well-rounded characters than anime's flaming stereotypes, like Leeron in Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann.
But actually, what I thought of on first hearing it, was something else. Namely (because I have large numbers of Penny Arcade strips memorized), to say, "Openly gay indeed. Indeed, sir. A universe of possibilities, and you're fixated on the local flavor."
(Read the newspost for that strip, it's hilarious.)
Personally I think it's unlikely that our form of homosexuality—one that attempts to recapitulate heterosexual relationships in all their particulars—shall survive long. Ours is the only society, after all, where such a thing has ever existed. Generally, a society either taboos homosexuality, or it values it significantly more than heterosexuality (mostly, again, because why would you wanna fall in love with a mere woman?). You can already see the latter phenomenon (femonenon?) in radical feminism's "political lesbianism", which almost precisely copies, except in mirror-image reverse, the misogynist ideas of Greek and Neo-Confucian male homosexuality.
Leaving any moral or religious considerations to one side, the argument for tabooing homosexuality comes from the same source—it is not directly for religious reasons that Hindus, Taoists, or more traditional Confucians taboo homosexuality. It's simply that, one's own sex generally being easier to deal with, many people will avoid the hassle of heterosexual relationships, not out of actual homosexual desire but merely out of convenience or timidity. That led, in Rome and certain eras of Chinese history, to declining birthrates, as well as to the neglect of wives and any children that did come along.
In a way, I have the same problem with this idea that Tycho jokingly suggests in the strip, there. With all the possibilities inherent in science fiction, especially of the Star Trek variety, why are you harping on your petty local politics? Give us Cmdr. Cherenkov, with his addiction to bioroid nerve tissue, or Speaker-to-Animals, holding himself honor-bound to starve even in full view of (human) meat. Give us the kif, with their hardwired dominance hierarchy, or the DearS, whose life-cycle requires masters willing to be served, and the destruction of any who aren't. You want to make us question our values, fine: but make us question all of them, and make sure they're really our values, not someone else's you're attacking as "the other". You want to give us an actually well thought-out character who happens to be homosexual (but whose homosexuality is not simply tacked on), fine—I'll believe that when I see it. But don't give us a token, affirmative action, run-down-the-checklist-and-see-if-we've-covered-all-the-diversity-bases, gay. There is not a single party—producers, audience, characters—who that last option does not demean.
So I guess I did have some more serious remarks to offer.
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