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ATV BLOG: Banning Gay Kisses Giant Leap Backwards

ATV BLOG: Banning Gay Kisses Giant Leap Backwards

Reports claim that David Cameron is likely to support an independent review which will call for same-sex kisses before the watershed to be banned but any such move would be a giant leap backwards for equal rights.

Coronation Street actress Brooke Vincent, who plays lesbian Sophie Webster, has already taken to Twitter to criticise the Prime Minister. It seems to ATV Today that the proposals are unlikely to implemented as they represent such a huge step backwards in terms of gay rights. The Conservatives have been keen to promote the idea they support gay rights but banning gay kisses before the watershed would expose that as a lie. It also seems unlikely the Liberal Democrats would support the idea either.

Banning gay kisses on-screen before the watershed would have huge and negative impact on gay issues in the country. It is largely thanks to soaps (but also ground-breaking dramas such as Queer as Folk) Christian and Syed - EastEndersthat attitudes to homosexuality has changed so much over the past twenty years. Soaps such as Brookside, EastEnders and Emmerdale led the way by introducing gay/lesbian characters in the late 1980s and early 1990s and slowly the audiences attitudes towards gay and lesbians changed. Every UK soap since the mid 1990s has featured gay characters even if that soap hasn’t lasted particularly long (the revived Crossroads for instance had several gay characters over its short course).

Today all four major UK soaps have gay/lesbian couples and banning them from kissing on-screen would present all kinds of problems for the storyliners. It would stop them from accurately portraying a gay relationship and prevent the characters from showing affection for each other. It is the kind of proposal you would expect to see imposed on American television where daytime soaps there are still weary of tackling gay storylines. There are notable exceptions to that and One Life to Live and As The World Turns deserve praise for having gay couples over the past few years but both met with outcries from the vocal conservative minority.  

Nowadays gay storylines/characters in UK soaps are pretty much a new code & convention of the genre. There’s always a vocal minority who complain when such characters kiss but its important to remember that when 50 complain out of an audience of 10 million it’s a very clearly a minority who complain and they are not representative of the majority of viewers. We shouldn’t pander to the bygone views of a One Life to Livefew and ban gay kisses because some of the audience have yet to enter the 21st century. The simple fact is the majority of people in this country are accepting and comfortable of the gay community and those who aren’t are a small and dwindling minority often using religion to hide their bigotry.

Banning gay kisses before the watershed would be harkening back to the dark days of Section 28 which banned the so-called “promotion” of homosexuality in schools. What it actually did was to encourage a culture that homosexuality was wrong – something such a ban on kisses would also encourage. Young people struggling to come to terms with who they are need positive portrayals of gay/lesbians to help them with the process of coming out. Having noticeable gay/lesbian characters in soaps/dramas and in relationships is a positive thing for young people to see. Banning gay kisses would throw the gay rights movement back years and reinforce the notion that homosexuality is wrong.

However, as we stated at the start of this article we don’t believe the banning of gay kisses is likely to happen. But then many who voted Liberal Democrat last year didn’t expect the party to betrayal their principles and enter into a coalition with the Conservatives. Sometimes the unexpected happens. The fact such an idea as this has even been “suggested” demonstrates the fight against prejudice and for equal rights is far from over.

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