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Homosexuality in Star Trek - where is it?
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[QUOTE]Originally posted by Balaam Xumucane: [QB] [QUOTE]Originally posted by Sol System: [qb] I challenge the assertion that Star Trek has ever been at the forefront of any cultural reform. Involved with, sure, but mostly I think peripherally. [/qb][/QUOTE]I worry that perhaps you're undermining the significance of what a chance they were taking. Gene had this ideal of this egalitarian society, this fantasy of a utopia where the color of your skin was not important, and so he put Uhura and Sulu on the bridge. It was an important thing for people to see at that time. A utopian future where the Klan has inbred itself out of existence and Uhura can be a bridge officer and it's no big whoop. You show people what's possible, how it could be good, and people start changing the way they see it, start thinking maybe. And if some people think it's window-dressing (and it is), then so be it, but he did it and it wasn't easy. And then the third Trek series had a (gasp!) black commander. It's not that Star Trek marched on Washington and demanded civil rights or anything even approaching that, but it showed us how it could be. It gave us a picture of what racial harmony might look like. And so I don't exactly know what the decision process for selecting Avery Brooks was, but I'll wager they (and when I say 'they', it's important to know that I'm talking about the studio) were looking for a 'colored' actor to play the commander. So when they talk about putting a gay character on Star Trek, I would sincerely hope that they would make it an interesting character who just happened to be gay. Not like picking out window valences and sipping-fruity-drinks-with-pinky-extended ha-ha aren't fags HI-larious gay, but just preferring relationships with people of the same sex. Not like vaseline-smeared lens foggy beauty shots of immaculately groomed and well muscled handsome young men, but you know, like, just kind of matter of fact, not making a big deal of it, mentioned in passing sort of thing. Ideally it wouldn't matter. Ideally no one would notice that as being note-worthy. Maybe I'm desensitized to it because I live twenty miles from San Francisco (both a gay mecca and the future home of Starfleet Command), but for the most part it just isn't a big deal, really. It's pretty much just like heterosexual relationships except that both partners happen to be the same gender. It's not all assless leather chaps and thick mustaches. And maybe it's important that our society gets to see what that'd be like. Gets to see a world where two men can share the same things a man and a woman could, where two women can raise a cat togehter without the crude jokes, without the judgements that they'd face today. Maybe it's important that we see what it would be like, so we can imagine it, and maybe twenty years hence they'll get some heavy from a long-dead quasi-detective show and he'll be the Commander of the kind of boring space-station that gets more exciting after a bit who also happens to be gay. And maybe at that point we won't even notice that he's Chinese. [/QB][/QUOTE]
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