Gay Aesop

"Love for one’s own sex can be just as pure and noble as that for the opposite sex."

— Different from the Others

An Aesop (or Gaesop if you will) that was pretty common in The '90s when gay people started becoming more and more prominent in the media. Basically, a character will be introduced that is soon revealed to be gay or bi (or if they were gutsy enough, a previously known character would be Forced Out of the Closet). Then the rest of the episode would be spent on one of the main characters discriminating against them, or fearing that they'll turn him gay or something, even if previous characterization would indicate that he would not be so ignorant. (Truth in Television, unfortunately: one of the dangers of coming out is that an LGBT person can't always tell which way an aquaintance, even an otherwise progressive one, will jump, and it usually takes more than thirty minutes to change their mind.)

Obviously, by the end, the main character learns his lesson that "homosexuals are people too" and should be treated equally just like everyone else. Unfortunately, if the gay character is not pre-established, he'll probably disappear with no further mention after this episode. If he is part of the supporting cast, the subject of his sexuality will rarely be brought up again.

The stories about accepting gay people are pretty straightforward, "Gay people deserve equal rights and opportunities" and "The love between two gay people is just as valid as the love between two straight people". The stories have evolved to include other forms of Aesops.

• "It's OK to question and explore your own sexual identity and take all the time you need to figure yourself out. If you're still having trouble identifying yourself, take part in LGBT movements or join their communities to see if it helps you understand yourself better".
• "Speculating about a person's sexuality is harmful and doing so can make it harder for people to come out without fear of rejection or ridicule".
• "Forcing someone out as gay is never a good thing and no matter how obvious it is, outing someone denies the other person the right to come out on their own terms".
• "LGBT people are just as flawed as everyone else and don't want to be put on a pedestal for being who they are".

While considered a Discredited Trope in Western media, since gay characters are now relatively prevalent (compared to previous decades), in Eastern media, this trope is still alive and well.

See also Coming-Out Story and Fair for Its Day. Sub-trope of Prejudice Aesop.

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Examples:

Comic Books

• Green Lantern #154, in which Green Lantern Kyle Rayner's personal assistant Terry Berg is beaten up by a group of random thugs while leaving a club with his boyfriend. This aesop is especially reinforced when this display of man's inhumanity to man is so bad that it inspires Kyle Rayner to abandon the Earth in favor of wandering outer space and helping random non-human species.
  • Interestingly, that's the inverse of the racial Aesop famously presented in Green Lantern #76 (Hal was pretty much staying away from Earth at that time).
• In the Static comics, Static saves a couple of guys from getting beat up. Turns out one of them is his friend, Rick Stone, and that they were getting beat up because they were gay. Static starts out trying to figure out what to think on his own, but once Rick outs himself to the whole school, he starts acting anti-gay. After Hotstreak terrorizes a political rally supporting gay rights, Static comes to terms with Rick's sexuality and they become friends again.
• Pulled off (surprisingly) in A Man Called Kev. Kev Hawkins visits an old SAS mate of his who now lives in the US on a marijuana plantation with a man-eating Bengal tiger and a beautiful woman. Kev is very surprised to learn that said beautiful woman is the sister of his mate's dead boyfriend. Given that Kev is a raging homophobe, it takes him a while to come to terms with the fact that his badass ex-military buddy is gay, but he does.
• Done in the Ms. Tree story "Skeletons in the Closet". At least in this case, the homophobic character (Mike, Jr.) was one who had long-established issues with homosexuals.
• Played with in Runaways, when Molly angrily berates Klara for expressing horror at Karolina and Xavin's relationship. On the one hand, of course, Klara is wrong to call Xavin an abomination or pass moral judgments on people she's only just met. On the other hand, Molly loses her temper and ends up escalating the situation, until Klara just shuts down and refuses to engage with her. They eventually make up.
• Downplayed in The Flash #53. At the beginning of the issue, Wally West is shocked and uncomfortable when his friend the Pied Piper comes out as gay and practically flees in a panic. But at the end of the issue the two are shown to have been cheerfully working together to beat the bad guy of the story, making it clear that Wally overcame his hang-ups fairly quickly. The story won a GLAAD Media Award.

Fanfic

• Throughout most of The Dark Children, Gideon hides his relationship with Roderick. He officially introduces him to his mother (Belle) at his house and to his father (Rumpelstiltkin) when discussing his mother's capture, and both times they parents express that they are just happy that their son found love.

Film

• One of the main reasons why Philadelphia has not aged well as a movie. Denzel Washington looking across the dance floor to see Tom Hanks and his partner waltzing together, and nodding as if to say "Yes... yes... gay people can dance too" was a unique message at the time. Indeed, Philadelphia was being made at a time when homosexuals were still being scapegoated for HIV, which the film specifically addresses, not to mention that homosexuality was still illegal in several states. And ironically the dancing scene was about as much as the film was able to get away with since Executive Meddling forced the removal of several scenes depicting their relationship more intimately.
• A classic example is the 1919 silent film Different from the Others, starring Conrad Veidt (yes, that one) as a gay violinist who ends up being blackmailed by an extortionist, making this trope Older Than Television.
• Another "gay man blackmailed" film with an anti-homophobia message is Victim (1961), which was an Anvil dropped so heavily it is part of the reason homosexuality was decriminalized in Britain.
• The Imitation Game, based on the life of World War II codebreaker Alan Turing (who lost his career and had to accept being chemically castrated as a means to avoid prison due to his sexual orientation, which also may have led him to kill himself) attempted to give this Aesop alongside Be Yourself. It was however criticized for focusing more on him being Inspirationally Disadvantaged and heavily downplaying his homosexuality.

Literature

• In Beyond Varallan, we are informed that the very idea of homosexuality is rather alien to Jorenians. Then, in Plague of Memory, the Jorenian warrior Qonja and Taercal 'breed Hawk—both of whom are dudes—fall for each other. Turns out that it's not that there are no gay Jorenians; it's that there's a disturbingly bigoted streak to their otherwise quite exemplary culture. This is made especially clear when Qonja is repudiated by his clan when he and Hawk basically elope.

• Loveless talks about the misconceptions about asexuality - both internal and external, only to show how they are both wrong and harmful.
• Theodore Sturgeon's controversial 1953 short story The World Well Lost is about a pair of fugitive alien lovers ("loverbirds") from the planet Dirbanu. The main characters later learn that both of the aliens are male, and that this was the exact reason for their exile. In a second, more poignant twist, it's heavily implied, if not outright stated, that the narrator has similar feelings for his partner. This has been milked for all it's worth by Slash Fic fans of Star Trek: The Original Series, for which Sturgeon wrote two episodes.

Live-Action TV

• All in the Family's Archie was just sure that Mike and Gloria's new friend was a "fruit" but later found out it was his own ex-jock buddy who was gay (the episode ends with him still having his doubts, however. After all, a "fruit" can't hit that hard... right?). The actor who played Archie, Carroll O'Connor, was an advocate of Gay Rights in Real Life. The only thing that disappointed him more than receiving hate mail from people who disliked his character's homophobia was receiving fan mail from people who agreed with it.
• Wings: Roy's son, played by guest star Abraham Benrubi.
• Averted on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. When Willow came out, the episode was more about her having to choose between her old love interest, Oz, and her new love interest, Tara, and the former's jealousy of the latter. The episode would still be mostly the same had both characters been male. Though, in earlier episodes, Willow hid the full extent of her relationship with Tara for a time, fearing her friends' reaction. Played straight with a later episode with Tara's family visiting, and horribly mistreating her due to her in-born magical talents that they feel she should repress.
• The first season Cheers episode "The Boys in the Bar".
• Ellen has Paige, the one friend of the title character who doesn't immediately accept her sexuality, take a few episodes to come around. Less subtly and much less realistically, Ellen's parents, especially her father, are initially hurt and angered at her coming out, but by the end of the same episode they've completely accepted her as gay.
• There's an Alice episode about this, featuring a childhood friend of hers who played football. She becomes fearful he'll molest her son, and eventually realizes to her chagrin that her fears are completely unfounded.
• Degrassi: The Next Generation did this with Marco, a relatively minor character at the time, who really became a headliner after he came out to the school. Some of his friends, like Jimmy, are accepting when he comes out, but Spinner is immediately hostile toward Marco. This culminates in an episode where Spinner is so worried that Marco wants to boink him that when he starts to choke, he refuses to let Marco give him the Heimlich maneuver. Upon realizing that it was only the Heimlich, Spinner is more accepting of Marco. The storyline even has Marco being gay bashed for the trifecta of this trope! Also note that Fan Wank on whether or not Marco was into Spinner is still out. A lot of people point out the uncanny similarities (looks- and personality-wise) between Spinner and Marco's on-again/off-again boyfriend, Dylan. They also did a transgender variation with Adam.
• Done on an episode of Designing Women with a fellow who has AIDS to boot. Julia chews out an eavesdropping client who bitches about the guy. Another episode deals with a lesbian character, whom one of the cast is nervous has feelings for her. The lesbian then explains the concept of Gaydar.
• Married... with Children gives us this story when Al and Peg meet Marcy's identical cousin Mandy, who comes out as a lesbian. Ironically, the only person who acts homophobic towards her is Peggy, a character trait that came out of nowhere, though she warms up at the very end. Mandy was an Author Avatar of actress Amanda Bearse, who had become an executive producer of the show and was coming out of the closet herself. Unfortunately, Marcy's cousin was never able to come back to visit because there were only 4 episodes left in the series. There was a Gaysop episode much earlier in the show's run (in the 5th season) where a gay guy played by Dan Castellaneta was afraid that Peggy was stealing his husband. Al learned tolerance very quickly, because the gay guy liked to cook when he was worried.
• The War at Home has Kenny as the homosexual guy. When he told his parents that he's gay, he was kicked out of the house. Later, in the episode "Kenny Doesn't Live Here Anymore", his parents were constantly told by Dave and Vicky Gold to "accept their child whoever he is". They took him back during the ending before Kenny gets to be taken by social services.
• From this segment of Ron White's 2006 stand-up comedy special You Can't Fix Stupid: "The most useless thing you can be is homophobic [..] we're all gay, it's just to what extent are you gay." Which leads into ... a gay joke. Which may be Hypocritical Humor for the subject of the joke and for Ron White (if it isn't okay to use homosexuality as the focus of a joke).
• In The Hughleys, we find out the family's next-door neighbor is a lesbian (and Asian to boot), just as DL begins to fear that his son is gay.
• In The Golden Girls when Blanche's brother comes out, she doesn't take it very well. Of course everything turns out fine by the end of the episode. That is until he returns to Florida to introduce his fiance...
  • In addition, there is also the episode where Dorothy's friend, a lesbian, comes to visit and falls for Rose.
• On Glee, this is a common plotline involving Camp Gay member Kurt...with varying degrees of subtlety. It's done somewhat more subtly with Santana and Karofsky.
• Interestingly this isn't actually played straight on Noah's Arc, though the movie has Brandon coming out to his parents and immediately getting the backlash. We never see how it resolves though.
• In the Student Bodies episode "Gay Friend" a new student turns out to be a lesbian and Emily has to overcome her homophobia.
• Japanese drama series Tumbling has an episode where Mizusawa is "outed" by a rival from another school (who'd overheard him confessing his crush on Kiyama), leading to the whole team being subjected to homophobic insults and Mizusawa's teammates refusing to work with him. Thankfully, protagonist Wataru is there to deliver the Aesop, and everything's back to normal by the end of the episode.
• In Drop the Dead Donkey, Helen's sexuality is an issue on and off throughout her entire run and she doesn't tend to get beaten up for it. However, her anxiety over coming out to her parents is played with when her father dies of a heart attack the day after she writes to them about it - and it wasn't anything to do with her coming out; in fact they always knew and her mother told her about other family members who would also have approved.
• There was a scene in an episode of the short-lived Sitcom The Associates where a representative of an LGBT anti-defamation organization comes prancing into the room, limp wrist, lisp, completely over the top, before switching to Straight Gay and pointing out how everyone there expected and accepted that he would act so flamboyantly and "talk like Sylvester the Cat".
• Played with and parodied in How I Met Your Mother, with Barney's gay brother James. Barney is shown to be highly supportive of James's lifestyle, even helping him pick up guys. However, when James reveals to Barney that he's engaged, Barney is against the idea of James getting married... because he's against anyone getting married. He also believes that if gays are allowed to get married, it'll strengthen the institution of marriage and inspire everyone to start doing it. He does learn to accept his brother's decision, but only after hearing that James wants to be a father, as Barney loves children.
• Dawson's Creek had Jack, who was originally brought along as a contender to Joey's heart, until he was revealed to be gay. Around this point he also became a main character, in a subversion of the classic trope.
• Beverly Hills, 90210 had a played down version with Kyle Conners, who was also brought along as competition for Brandon in his quest for Kelly. He then comes out to her as gay. She was shown to be very accepting. However, he didn't have any appearances on the show afterwards, so his arc was never actually completed.
  • Later seasons played the trope very straight with the gay frat boy Mike, who was accidentally outed by Steve. His fraternity had to learn to accept him, and Steve learned an important lesson about support, privacy and acceptance.
  • Though that lesson wasn't enough for him and his other friends to comprehend the possibility of a friendship between a straight and a gay woman. When Kelly befriends her fellow fire-survivor Alison, who is seriously crushing on her, her friends mock her mercilessly.
  • Irony hit a peak when it Steve's mother turned out to be same-sex inclined, and starts an affair with another woman. In the Aesop department, this arc was used in order to show the differences between Steve's and Janet's (his fiance) families, and how their love was strong enough to beat her family's general bigotry.
• In the Titus episode "Tommy's Not Gay", Tommy's dad comes out of the closet, and Tommy disowns him, fearing that everyone will think that he himself is gay. This earns him the disgust of his friends - even the otherwise-bigoted Ken - especially after his dad gets beaten up and Tommy insists that he deserved it. Eventually, Tommy comes around and reconciles with his dad.
• That '70s Show:
  • In an early episode, Eric makes a new friend who turns out to be gay.
  • Subverted in a later episode when a gay couple moves in next door to the Foremans. Red learns by the end to accept their sexuality - but when he finds out they're Jets fans, he angrily kicks them out.
• The West Wing dealt with queer issues a number of times, but one of the most striking was in "Take Out the Trash Day". President Bartlet is about to sign in a hate crime bill that was spurred by the brutal murder of a gay teen, and his press staff are making arrangements for the boy's parents to be there. However, they get an odd "quiet" vibe from the father, making them worry that he's actually displeased about his late son's orientation, thus he doesn't even support the bill and will say things the administration will regret if he talks to the press. After agonizing over the right course and finally inviting the couple in to vet them, they find that indeed he is very unhappy with the president's position. He thinks Bartlet's gay rights stance is far too weak. Moral: while guarding against bigotry, beware of reverse bigotry. The sad twist is that, humbled as the staff are, they're obliged to cancel the parents' invitation after all. Badmouthing the president in any direction is just not something the press office can enable.
  Mr. Lydell: Lady, I'm not embarrassed my son was gay. My government is.
• A mid-90's storyline on All My Children had a schoolteacher coming out of the closet to his students. Some parents immediately began a campaign to get him fired. Surprisingly, some of the "good" characters had a problem with his sexuality, while a few of the supposed villains had no problem with it.
• During roughly the same time period, One Life to Live tackled the issue as well. When a local teen confessed to the local minister that he was gay, the man kept his secret. Unfortunately, a young woman angry that he had rebuffed her advances spread rumors that he had seduced the boy. The ensuing chaos nearly ruined the man's career, but he was ultimately exonerated, while the boy went on to a happy life, even eventually reconciling with his parents.
• Party of Five delivered several, which wasn't surprising, since it was set in San Francisco:
  • In Season 1, Claudia's violin tutor Ross (who had been a recurring character) reveals to her he's gay when she tries to set him up with a waitress at Salinger's. Refreshingly after Claudia accepted it, Ross remained on the show for six season and even had a story arc about trying to convince the courts to let a single gay man adopt a child.
  • One of Claudia's teachers is also revealed to be gay when he starts dating Ross. Ross is initially supportive of the teacher's desire to keep his sexuality a secret so as not to be bothered at work, but breaks things off when he realises that he doesn't want to make it public at all.
  • Season 2 has an offscreen friend of Justin's visiting for the weekend. She reveals she's a closeted lesbian when she makes a pass at Julia. After Julia rejects her, she tries to pretend she's straight by hooking up with a random guy in a bar. But the episode ends with the implication that she'll come out to her parents.
  • Sarah dates a boy called Elliot in Season 4 and the two try to have Their First Time - only for Elliot to end up making a pass at Bailey instead. The end of the episode has them going to the theatre together anyway.
    "Just because he's gay, doesn't mean we don't have things in common."
• Parodied in The It Crowd, in the episode "The Work Outing." While Moss initially seems repulsed at Gay! The Musical, he doesn't care that it has themes about sexuality, he objects to seeing it because it's set in The '80s. He even comes around to it in the end.
• Kinpachi-sensei has done this with both gay characters and transgender characters.
• The Boys (2019) has a scene where the superhero team "The Seven" play themselves in an Avengers-style blockbuster film. Wonder Woman-expy Queen Maeve's relationship with another woman had just become public in the previous episode, so pretty much everyone involved tried to milk this detail for the sake of looking inclusive. The end result is that there's at least one moment in the film where the plot comes to a screeching halt just to show Maeve having a moment with another woman. What's more, the PR team ignore the fact that Maeve is actually bisexual because they believe a bisexual being in a same-sex relationship is too nuanced for their target audience and expect her partner to look less feminine because they're not on board with the idea that same-sex couples might not neatly fit into masculine-feminine roles. The end result comes across almost as insensitive as actual homophobia.
• Star Trek: The Next Generation: "The Outcast" was the show's attempt to address gay rights as the franchise had previously addressed racism and other issues. Instead of showing actual gay people, though, the episode used a metaphor in which a member of an androgynous race begins to identify as female and falls in love with Commander Riker. Opinions may differ as to whether this was clumsy or Fair for Its Day. In recent years, some trans Trekkies have said that it works better if taken literally, as being about gender identity rather than sexual orientation.
• Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, "Rejoined". The franchise tried again a few years later, this time using an actual same-gender pairing: Jadzia Dax and Lenara Kahn, who had been married when their symbionts were in previous hosts. The discrimination problem was not the fact that they were both women, but that Trill society rejects such "reassociation" between subsequent hosts.
• Machos: When Ariel reveals that he is gay to his brothers, he finds different degrees of homophobia from them, although sooner or later almost everyone accepts it.

Music

• Although not explicit in itself, the song "Jumper" by Alternative Rock band Third Eye Blind is a Gay Aesop. According to lead singer Stephan Jenkins, the song "comes from a story our manager told us about a high school friend of his who was gay. He went to a conservative school in San Diego [with] all sons of military types. Being gay was just not acceptable. He offed himself—he jumped off a bridge."
• Franco De Vita: The theme of "Rosa o clavel" (Rose Or Carnation), which tells about two people from the same sex who love each other and live happily together. As Franco sings, he tells his listeners that what they're witnessing (the gay couple) shouldn't be a big deal for anyone.
• Lady Gaga concerts have a very strong theme of saying that you should feel free to be yourself. In addition to that a lot of her concert themes are about giving full rights and freedom for gay people.
• "Feed Jake" by Country Music band Pirates of the Mississippi has one. This is quite a surprise, considering it was released in 1990 in one of the most conservative musical genres:
  Now if you get an ear pierced, some will call you gay
  But if you drive a pickup, they'll say no, you must be straight
  What we are and what we ain't
  What we can and what we can't
  Does it really matter?
• Lightly and humorously distributed in Pink Martini's "Bitty Boppy Betty," about a charismatic D.A. who dresses up as a woman on the weekends, and what's wrong with that?
• Similarly, Miranda Lambert's "All Kinds of Kinds" has "a congressman with closets full of skeletons and dresses that he wore on Friday nights".
• The Vocaloid song "Magnet" implies this. The original version involved Miku and Luka being together but their relationship being condemned by those around them, resulting in a Star-Crossed Lovers scenario. Granted it's never explicitly stated that their love is forbidden because they're lesbians, but considering the fact that it's about "forbidden" love and the characters in question are both girls...
• "My Heart Beats For Love" by Miley Cyrus is at least partially a tribute to this concept. Inspired by a friend and his mission to find love.
• "We R Who We R" by Kesha is this.
• "American Triangle" by Elton John, an account of Matthew Shepard's tragic death, is one, along with being anti-hate crimes.
• Macklemore made a song called "Same Love", which has the message that love is love regardless of gender or race. The video goes through the life of a gay couple, and even has a message at the end to support Referendum 74, which would overturn the ban on same-sex marriage in the state of Washington.
• "Anti-Homophobe" by Brutal Truth is an Extreme Metal example of this trope.
• Played for Laughs in "I Love Fags" by MC Frontalot, which skewers anti-gay bigotry.
  I'm insisting on containing my temper, but listen up!
  You shouldn't ought to be intolerant about who queers like to fuck.
• "Follow Your Arrow" by Kacey Musgraves:
  Make lots of noise
  Kiss lots of boys
  Or kiss lots of girls, if that's what you're into...
• Pretty Balanced has "Floating", a song about two schoolboys in love who can't find acceptance.
  Why is it that even in this day and age
  They're beat down, they can't just say "I love you"?
• "Fuck Anita Bryant" by David Allan Coe is the first Country Music example of this trope.
• The message of this video for the Jefferson Airplane version of David Crosby's "Triad" is that it's OK for a guy to participate in an MMF bisexual threesome.
  • David Crosby's original song was about a man who wants to be with two women. Crosby was open about the fact that having two wives or girlfriends always felt right to him.
• Garth Brooks worked the lyric "When we're free to love anyone we choose" into his 1992 hit "We Shall Be Free".
• Luke Bryan's "Most People Are Good" contains the lyric "I believe you love who you love, ain't nothing you should ever be ashamed of", which many fans have taken as a de-facto pro-gay message.
• Eminem, who has his 'homophobia' (and the literal picket lines he inspired) as part of his persona, has done several, though prefers to avoid straightforward messages of empowerment in favour of nasty satire... and Queer People Are Funny.
  • In "The Real Slim Shady", he mocks the way Think of the Children! arguments are used to prevent us talking about female sexual pleasure, all while kids find depraved stuff all the time and already know about sex. In a world where Tom Green can have sex with a moose on TV, why can't two men can't get married? (Prompting an interjection from his Depraved Homosexual character, Ken Kaniff.)
  • Eminem's performance of "Stan" at the 2001 Grammy Awards, with Elton John, is usually interpreted as this, especially with the Homoerotic Subtext of the song itself (Stan, while a monster, is a Stalker with a Crush whose love of Slim is played as sympathetic). Elton's gushing and romantic piano ends up making the song sound like a love song, and when the two men hug at the end, Em scowls and flips off the audience in contempt.
  • "Rain Man" contains an entire verse making fun of homophobia. Em, rapping in character as a Southern preacher, starts by reading from the Bible about how homosexuality is a sin, and bisexuality is also a sin, but less bad for some reason. Then he switches to a young man being insecure in front of his homies, contriving a number of scenarios (playing golf... a man having anal sex with a man...) to ask Dre if it's gay to do them ("yeah").
  • Joyner Lucas and Eminem's "What If I Was Gay" is a story in which Joyner plays a man coming out to his friend (played by Eminem) about his sexuality, who then advises him to remain in the closet due to what the Bible says. When Joyner's character kills himself, Eminem's character realises he was responsible for the death, and then admits that he's gay, too. Both men found it Narmful and scrapped it, but it leaked.

Theatre

• Avenue Q plays with this trope. Rod has much more trouble accepting his homosexuality than any of his friends do.
  • "If You Were Gay" is basically this trope in song form.
  • Subverted in Nicky, who (unlike the Urban Legend of the character's inspiration) is straight, living with a man everyone knows not only to be gay but to have a crush on Nicky. Not only is Nicky surprisingly unfazed by Rod's confession during a dream, when Nicky gets evicted, nobody makes comments about lover's spats. When Nicky returns, he does so with a Suspiciously Similar Substitute who looks just like him, but with a better body, as a hook-up for Rod.
• Sort of the whole point of The Normal Heart, although the characters are diverse in personality and shown to be just as flawed as straights, avoiding the Magical Queer trap.
• The purpose of La Cage aux folles was to demonstrate that gay families are as stable and as equal to straight families.
• Dog Sees God is all about the damage homophobic bullying can do, as seen with how the relentless mockery Beethoven receives from Matt leads him to depression and isolation.
• The Laramie Project brutally enforces the idea that people who genuinely believe that others deserve to die just because they're gay really do exist and trying to pretend they don't does nothing but harm gay people. It describes the visceral details of Matthew Shepard's killing, the total lack of motivation for the murder besides his sexuality, and shows the sheer lack of sympathy many have for Matthew despite his brutal murder.
• Subverted in Altar Boyz, where Mark comes out...as a Catholic.

Web Comics

• Welcome to Room #305 has a number of gay messages to put across, justified that it's a Korean comic and that's a lot of anvils.
• Daughter of the Lilies has a "drath" (a damned soul put into the body of an animal, used in a necromantic ritual) mocking a teacher about his gay son as part of a Thanatos Gambit so it can Fusion Dance with him. If he had been more accepting, he wouldn't have gotten his soul eaten.

Web Original

• Limyaael's Fantasy Rants: In point 7 of her rant on gay and lesbian characters, she advises against writing "gay message fantasy", largely because it's frequently quite heavy-handed. She feels this increases the distance between LGBT and straight characters mostly, with a better way being to simply portray them as people like everyone else, not focusing too much on their sexual orientations or having problems so much about that. She admits however that Mercedes Lackey (who's criticized for this in Limyaael's rant) was pretty progressive to write pro-LGBT stories at all in the 1980s/early 1990s.

Western Animation

• The reboot of The Proud Family, The Proud Family: Louder and Prouder, has the episode "Father Figures". It deals with homophobia, more specifically kids of same-sex parents being bullied for that. Of note is hypocrisy in regards to their treatment versus that of Michael (who gets by due to his aggressive father) as well as the fact that even otherwise tolerant people can go with the crowd and ignore bigotry (Penny's friends, who genuinely aren't homophobic but go with the crowd anyways).
• Being a show about Drags, Super Drags naturally has most episodes center around problems that affect gay men and other queer people, like expulsion from home by one's parents, profiling, insecurities about one's appearance, abusive homophobic childhoods, conversion therapy, the reality that some LGBT people are willing to use homophobia to advance themselves and having your favourite singer replaced by a shitty tap dancing one.
• The Simpsons:
  • "Homer's Phobia" involved Homer unknowingly befriending a gay man, (wrongly) fearing that Bart was gay, and various other things along those lines. He ends up getting saved from a herd of angry reindeer by the gay guy.
    John: Well, Homer, I won your respect, and all I had to do was save your life. Now, if every gay man could just do the same, you'd be set.
  • "There's Something About Marrying" involved Patty getting outed as a lesbian when she wants to marry her girlfriend. Marge had a hard time with this at first, but learned to accept it.
    Marge: Just because you're a lesbian, it doesn't make you any less of a bein'.
• Family Guy:
  • In "You May Now Kiss the...Uh...Guy Who Receives", Lois did not accept Brian's cousin Jasper's gay wedding, but turned around at the end of the episode when she found out that her parent's marriage is not happy (if unhappy straight marriages are apparently sacred, exactly what makes happy gay ones wrong, essentially). Brian holds the mayor at gun point in order to get gay marriage legalized, though Lois calls him on it, saying that he's no better for resorting to such an act.
  • Pulled off awkwardly in "Family Gay". Peter gets injected with the "gay gene" and instantly becomes the Camp Gay stereotype, which undermines the Aesop.
  • In "Quagmire's Dad", Quagmire's dad transitions into a woman. Despite a few flickering moments of sympathy for her (and Seth MacFarlane saying it was gonna be awesome for trans individuals), other characters frequently refer to Quagmire Sr. as "it", and Brian vomits like a fire hydrant upon learning that he had sex with a former man. GLAAD and many other LGBT groups were extremely unhappy with them about this one.
• American Dad! actually has three episodes devoted to gay rights ("Lincoln Lover", "Surro-gate" and "Daddy Queerest"), but, unlike Family Guy, the Aesops are pulled off incredibly well (except the first example, which is rather biased):
  • In "Lincoln Lover" Stan learns to accept general homosexuality after meeting the Log Cabin Republicans and discovers that being gay is not a choice. How? He himself tried to be gay. He concludes that they should discriminate towards Democrats instead, as being a Democrat is a choice.
  • In "Surro-gate", Stan is more friendly toward gays, but he thinks that gays shouldn't raise children, and actually kidnaps the gay neighbors' newborn baby so he can put her in a "righteous" foster home. He changes his mind when he sees that the children from a lesbian couple behave very similarly to his own children.
  • In "Daddy Queerest", Stan is now a gay rights supporter, and tries to make Terry's dad accept his son's homosexuality. He fails, but the Aesop is that if somebody doesn't love you the way you are, then he doesn't love you as much as you think.
• South Park:
  • "Big Gay Al's Big Gay Boat Ride" was about Stan having to accept his dog Sparky being gay.
  • And later in "Cripple Fight" Big Gay Al is kicked out of Boy Scouts for being gay and fears he'll molest the kids. Then the scout leaders unintentionally hire an actual pedophile who later is arrested. After the boys get the Supreme Court to force the Boy Scouts to let him back in, Al says he doesn't want to go back. He hopes that one day the Boy Scouts will choose to change their policy on their own, but doesn't want to impose his will on others in the meantime. Then Gloria Allred, the woman helping him, calls him a homophobe.
  • In "The Death Camp of Tolerance", Mr. Garrison learns that if he gets fired for being gay, he can sue the school for a load of money. He gets a new teaching assistant (and boyfriend) Mr. Slave, and they perform raunchy sexual acts when teaching and the kids are justly horrified. The adults tell the kids that they're being homophobic and are sent to the eponymous Auschwitz-like tolerance camp. Mr. Garrison receives award after award for his "courageous behavior" until he finally snaps and tells everyone that being overly-tolerant is just as bad as being intolerant. He is judged to be a Boomerang Bigot intolerant of his own homosexuality and sent to the tolerance camp himself, although that might have just been a flimsy excuse the principal made up to punish him, since at the end of his angry rant, he accidentally let slip his plan to sue the school.
  • In "Tweek x Craig", a yaoi-loving troupe of Asian students pair up Craig and Tweek. Most of the town love their new gay couple because it makes them look open-minded and tolerant (never mind that both boys are pretty surprised and distressed by the whole thing). Craig's dad concludes that the Japanese simply decide who will be gay, and accordingly tells Craig that he doesn't love him any less. Afterward, Tweek and Craig pair up for real.
• In Rocko's Modern Life, at the end of the episode "Closet Clown", the title character suffers this when he admits he likes rainbows. Suddenly his friends turn against him and chase him down with rakes.

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