Quotes / Bury Your Gays

Fanfic

Katy: The third element [of lesbian romance fiction]... is tragedy.
Saya: Tragedy?
Katy: Of course, dear heart. The laws and culture of the mid-20th century allowed sapphic beauty to be displayed... as long as it didn't end happily. The lesbian romance must be portrayed as dangerous, toxic, desperate. It ends with madness or suicide or prison. The laws have changed, but that remains a key, key aspect of the genre.
Saya: Wait. All of your stories have tragic endings?
Katy: That's why it's all so romantic! Look on TV! Half the gay characters die, and the other half are crazy. And the deaths are extra tragic, they're heroic sacrifices or a cruel, pointless murder that happens right as they're most joyful. This is the beauty of lesbian romance!

— New Hope University: Major In Murder

Literature

Let us even go so far as to say that this kind of relationship can sometimes be almost beautiful — particularly if one of the parties is already dead; or better yet, both.

— A Single Man

Why is there never any gay couples
In these shitty gay romance movies
Who don't die of AIDS or get murdered
By homophobic hoodlums?

— Pretty Teenage Violence: Poetry from and Inspired By My Shitty High School Experiences

Live-Action TV

Daniela: [This role is] a lifelong bachelor, but at least he doesn't die from AIDS!
Lito: So he does die, then.
Daniela: Drug overdose.

— Sense8, discussing the exclusively gay roles Lito is offered post-coming out

Summer: Oh, I know more stuff too. Did you know that queer female TV characters are much more likely to be killed off than straight characters?
Gloria: I didn't know that. Fun facts.
Summer: Oh, I don't think it's fun.

— Girls5eva

Music

Gettin' your kicks in another girl's bed
And it was only last Tuesday...
They found you in the subway, dead!

— Elton John, "All the Girls Love Alice"

Press

"[Behind the Candelabra] is a film that reminds viewers that any deviancy from heterosexuality will ultimately result in death by suicide, murder or AIDS."

— The Guardian, Why are gay characters at the top of Hollywood's kill list? (2013)

"Colin Firth simply drops dead for no reason. Presumably overwhelmed by sheer homosexuality, his heart can no longer keep beating. Beware, non-heterosexuals: Sudden Gay Death Syndrome can strike anywhere."

— The Guardian, discussing the movie A Single Man

"(a lot of the lesbian and bisexual characters in film and TV these days wind up dead)"

— A Buzzfeed News article that mentions the trope as a parenthetical because it's not really news anymore

"[This] trope is alive and well on TV, and fictional lesbian and bisexual women in particular have a very small chance of leading long and productive lives."

— Variety

"What would happen if every straight, white, male character got inexplicably and deplorably killed off in every show you watched just to further the plot? To a point where you see a straight character and immediately think: "yep, he's gonna die when he walks into a room without a bulletproof vest". What does it mean, when a writer or showrunner cannot work within constraints for that LGBT character and the only option, in their minds, is to kill them off? What does it mean, when LGBT fans seek solace in the world of fanfiction or "fix-it-fic" because the actual, professional show writers failed them? What does it mean, when you kill off a LGBT character because you had to use them as a plot device and couldn't find anyway else to explain the plot? What message do you send out, when you write these cheap deaths? That LGBT fans do not deserve to love who they love? That they should fear every door they open? That they should be punished for simply being who they are?"

— Nicola Choi, LGBT Fans Deserve Better

"Naturally, people die on television [...] But the trend of queer female deaths is unusual in its cruelty and frequency."

—The Harvard Political Review

Web Original

"Kudos for including such a well-developed gay character! Have you figured out how you're going to kill them yet?"

—Worst Muse

Every lesbian that died in a tv show is now happy in love with their girlfriend in San Junipero

— A Tumblr user that found a silver lining to the trope: lesbian heaven

"[...]at least 20% of queer characters on TV die. [...] if 20% of straight characters died it would not have such a negative effect on the relevant community - and not just because there's something like 15x more straight characters on TV. They are not a minority. Not every straight character dying will matter to every straight person because the fact they are straight does not matter - there are many that will because different people will associate with different characters who share traits with them. But every queer character death matters to every member of the queer community - sometimes because their sexuality or gender identity is a large part of their characterization, but always because this is a representative minority being removed from society in the most final (and often tragic) way. It is already hard to feel normal in the world with a queer identity, even if transient to your person and yes still today, so taking out representation that queer people can identify with is sacking the minority, devaluing visibility and reducing positivity for the queer minority, and matters more than (straight) character deaths. [...] It would absolutely be sad and shitty if it became a noticeable trend that straight characters were dying, but it may take more to get there because they are not these rare precious lights that queer characters are, because often their sexuality is an easily overlooked aspect of their character (i.e. is rather unimportant to the demographic they are representing), and because their deaths (especially of straight white men) are usually not cheap. It is the randomness, the cheapness, the lack of meaning and value to many queer character deaths that makes them more uncomfortable and thus recognizable than an important death either as conclusion to/part of a good plotline or as initiating its own story (that isn't the dead character's partner being miserable). [...] the effect on straight communities - even if the straight characters got the same treatment - in this world where straight people are the prioritized majority would not be as negative as the effect that Bury Your Gays has on queer communities because it is a reinforcement of real world feelings of being invaluable that straight people likely cannot understand (in terms of sexual identity, [because] racial minorities experience a similar thing, look to the reactions of surprised joy at Black Panther (2018), for example). [...] One every now and again? Shit happens. One on every other show, every other season? The queer viewers will start to feel attacked."

— Queer in the Media, "Bury Your Gays and the negative minority"

"Arizona at the end of this year after seeing all the dead lesbians[:]
Arizona: I may be the last of my kind."

— A tumblr user, at least before Arizona's actress got fired

Another New Adventure cliché was a token gay character, usually a young man who smiles winsomely, then dies a horrible, gory death two chapters later.

—Lance Parkin, The Dying Days author notes

Real Life

"One of my gay friends has this kind of sad hobby in which she watches every lesbian movie she can find, trying to find ones that actually end up with the women not either dying or breaking up. I think the most positive one she’s found is D.E.B.S."

—BioWare writer Patrick Weekes

"XV. And be it enacted, That every Person convicted of the abominable Crime of Buggery, committed either with Mankind or with any Animal, shall suffer Death as a Felon."

—Offences against the Person Act 1828

"Sec. 3. The infamous crime against nature, either with man or beast, shall subject the offender, on conviction thereof, to death"

—The revised statutes of the state of Arkansas

Seeing that it is better that offenders should die rather than that all of us should be killed by God's just wrath against us for the folly of tolerating wickedness in our midst, the People of California wisely command, in the fear of God, that any person who willingly touches another person of the same gender for purposes of sexual gratification be put to death by bullets to the head or by any other convenient method.

—Extract of the Sodomite Suppression Act, a ballot initiative proposed by Matthew McLaughlin on 2015

Others

"I was really excited about it. I hadn't really seen much of that representation in television that I personally watch. I know it's out there, but often times it's written in a specific way. 'Let's introduce a gay character and quickly kill them off,' so you have the ride of the complexity of this amazing character, but also [you do] not necessarily deal with them over the course of our entire show. Obviously, that’s probably not going to happen in this case [laughs], because Rosa is a core member of this ensemble. It's not like she's going to come out and then get hit by a car and get killed off. It's really cool to me that our show is exploring something with almost the safety net underneath it, telling the audience, 'Look, we're not doing this so that we can explore a story and simply throw it away when it's convenient for us. We are going to keep this person around because we love this person already.' It's part of the family."

— Stephanie Beatriz on her Brooklyn Nine-Nine character coming out

"The sanctity of the institution of marriage and the home shall be upheld. Pictures shall not infer that low forms of sex relationship are the accepted or common thing."

— The Motion Picture Production Code, 1930

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