Sunday, March 15, 2009

OMG, Scandal!!!

That's right people: Home and Away featuring a lesbian couple could possibly corrupt your kiddies! According to the Herald Sun article linked, the popular (sadly) TV soap opera is featuring a storyline involving two women falling in love and they think it's too risque.

Yeah, sure. If it featured full-on, butt naked, strap-on including sex.

But it's not. What is featuring, however, is a storyline along the same as any other storyline the soap's had: two people meet, two people fall in love, something horrible happens, they break up. Only this time, instead of the heteronormative man&woman pairing, it's two women. For some reason expressing a lesbian pairing as being anything resembling normal is bad. Despite it being completely normal and natural.

And yet, there are still family orientated groups out there kicking up a fuss. Most of them, sorry for generalising, are related to a church in some fashion. They believe that it's bad, that it's wrong, unnatural, against their God's will.

Well, I've got this to say: if being homosexual was against your God's will, then why did he create homosexuals in the first place?

I'm quite glad that, for once, being homosexual is being portrayed as being normal in a prime time, regularly watched TV show. Because I've never seen it done outside of shows where it is the main gimmick (Will&Grace, Queer As Folk, The L Word...). I hope that it will encourage people who would otherwise see being queer as wrong that it is actually normal, that just because it is not what you are does not mean that it is bad.

I also hope that this may be the start of getting queers into the mainstream - really, we're only portray when it's funny, or stereotypically, or if it's hot. Never as normal people, with normal jobs and normal worries and normal up and downs. Because that's what we are: normal. Not a freak show, not something to be shunned, left to side. Not a group of people who "shouldn't have equal rights". (We should, but that's another rant for another day) Who are considered 'too risque' for any television slot before 10pm.

I just hope that Home and Away don't portray the couple as 'choosing' to be gay. Because it's not a choice, it's how you're born, just like race and gender. You can't help it. So why should we be discriminated against for it?

2 comments:

  1. Grey's had a lesbian storyline showing them as normal people, as is to be expected...

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  2. That's still one show out of how many?

    ReplyDelete