The Galveston Daily News from Galveston, Texas • Page 31

GALVESTON COUNTY, TEXAS SUNDAY, JANUARY 14, 1996 7-C TV makes room for more gay characters The Associated Press LOS ANGELES has discovered safe sex: Gay and lesbian characters are just dandy as long as you leave out the passion and substitute punchlines instead. Howls of protest once greeted homosexual story lines. Now, a growing number of gay characters populate TV series, especially sitcoms, but are drawing scant fire from conservative critics. And, they are provoking little apparent skittishness among advertisers or station owners. The secret? Keep it light and try to avoid the physical stuff.

And, just maybe, count on familiarity to breed viewer acceptance. In 1990, ABC lost half its advertisers and $1 million for an episode of the drama "thir- tysomething" showing two men in bed. More recently, Roseanne was slammed for smooching with Mariel Hemingway and Fox, under pressure, cut a gay kiss from "Melrose Place." In 1994, two TV stations pulled an episode of "Northern Exposure" that featured a gay wedding. If there's one thing that makes a network lose its vertical hold, it's controversy. Yet the gay and lesbian presence on TV is greater this season than ever before.

On Thursday, "Friends" celebrates the marriage of Ross' lesbian ex-wife to her partner. Lesbian activist Candace Gingrich sibling of House Speaker Newt Gingrich officiates as minister. Tomorrow, over on "Wings," the estranged gay son of Roy Biggins (David Schramm) returns for his father's birthday party and a chance to re-establish their relationship. That's just this week. There's a laundry list of 1995-96 series that include continuing gay have used homosexual plot lines.

Candace Gingrich, center, sister of House Speaker Newt Gingrich, portrays the minister as Jessica Hecht, left, and Jane Sibbett get married on the NBC show "Friends." Television has discovered safe sex: gay and lesbian characters are just dandy as long as you leave out the passion. (AP) On "NYPD Blue," a gay precinct receptionist has met with antipathy from Dennis Franz's Detective Sipowicz and counseled a may-be-coming-out female detective. There is an openly gay have my boyfriend will kill secretary on "High Society" and an apparently gay one on "Murder One." The now-canceled "Pursuit of Happiness" featured an attorney who came out in the pilot episode. And count in the music teacher on "Party of Five," Nora Dunn's character on "Sisters" and David Burke's flight attendant, Paul, "The Crew." "Live Shot" has a gay reporter who in one episode clashes with a professional athlete who wants out of the closet. "Courthouse," a short-lived drama, featured a lesbian couple.

There are more fleeting ref- erences as well. A favorite joke this season has been gay mistaken identity: artist Richard (Malcolm Gets) on "Caroline in the City" briefly hides his heterosexuality after being included in a gays-only gallery show, but then confesses his straightness. Chandler and Joey (Matthew Perry, Matt LeBlanc) of "Friends" are baby-sitting Ross' infant for a day and are mistaken as an adoptive gay couple by a bystander. Ross (David Schwimmer) appears on "The Single Guy" and he and star Jonathan Silverman get the wrong idea about each other's sexuality. On "Homicide: Life on the Street," mistaken identity takes a tragic turn when a straight men is mistaken for gay and dies in a hate crime.

When detectives tell the victim's father they believe his son was gay, he tells them "Queers are sick If what you say is true, it's better he's dead." Later, a sympathetic detective says: "Hetero, homo, what does it matter? He's dead." On "Roseanne," the star talks her former boss Leon (Martin Mull) through wedding cold feet when he questions his homosexuality: "You couldn't be any gayer if your name was Gay Gayerson," Roseanne assures him. The celebratory kiss was more suggested than shown; on "Friends" Thursday there will be no kiss. (OK, there was a lesbian smooch this season on "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine," but that was with an alien who used to be a man. Extenuating circumstances.) For potential critics, the muted outcry does not mean they are content with the situation. One group suggests the restraint, in part, reflects the fact that protest equals publicity for TV.

The conservative watchdog Free Enterprise Media Institute has been keeping an eye on the increase in gay depictions. It says viewer rebellion at more graphic sexual displays forced the networks to retreat, but only so far. "I think the entertainment industry collectively thinks the rest of the world needs to accept this lifestyle," said Sandy Crawford, who monitors Hollywood as the institute's entertainment division director. "They realized they couldn't make the lifestyle palatable by shocking people" so they turned up the volume, she said. Political pressure from gay activists has been a factor, Crawford contended.

Wrong, respond "Wings" producers Mark Reisman and Howard Gewirtz. "I don't know any producer who would either do an episode or not do an episode because they're lobbied," said Gewirtz. Of this week's "We're just proud of it as an episode that deals with a father and a son, and we think it's touching and honest." While the gay and lesbian community welcomes its increasingly high TV profile, members have their own complaints. The picture "is brighter, but there's an asterisk there," said Tamra King of the Los Angeles chapter of the Gay Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation. "Gays and lesbians are definitely more visible in prime time television," she said.

"The disclaimer that needs to follow is the overwhelming majority of gay and lesbian representations are usually on sitcoms and usually just for an episode." The goal, she said, is continuing gay characters i and ones whose major distinction is not their sexuality. 'Current Affair' to get axe The Associated Press NEW Ka-chung! "A Current Affair" has been cut. The granddaddy of syndicated news magazines, with its pyramid logo and wind- whistling intro, is calling it quits after September. Despite improved ratings in a less tawdry format, won't be returning for the 1996-97 season, Twentieth Television, the show's distributor, announced Wednesday. "A Current Affair' has had a wonderful nine-year run and has been a tremendous asset to Twentieth Television," said Rick Jacobson, the company's president.

"The show is as good as it's ever been right now." However, "Affair," the nation's first syndicated tabloid show and long the ratings leader, had in recent years slipped to No. 3 position behind the shows it inspired: "Hard Copy" and current front-runner "Inside Edition." In acompetitive program- ing marketplace, the show's continued presence in certain key cities was in doubt. "It wasn't economically feasible to program under those circumstances," Jacobson said. Launched nationally on Fox-owned stations in June 1987, the show was re-introduced in September as "The New A Current Affair," anchored by former "Dateline NBC" correspondent Jon Scott. Even though this season's audience has grown from 3.24 million to 3.91 million households, the show remains in third place.

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