Do Ask, Do Tell

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The other day, I happened to tune into the Ricki Lake Show, the fastest-rising talk show ever. The topic: 'I don't want gays around my kids.' I caught the last 20 minutes of what amounted to a pro-gay screamfest. Ricki and her audience explicitly attacked a large woman who was denying visitation rights to her gay ex-husband ('I had to explain to a 9-year-old what 'gay' means'; 'My child started having nightmares after he visited his father'). And they went at a young couple who believed in keeping children away from gay people on the grounds that the Bible says 'homosexuals should die.' The gay guests and their supporters had the last word, brought on to argue, to much audience whooping, that loving gays are a positive influence and hateful heterosexuals should stay away from children. The anti-gay guests were denounced on any number of grounds, by host, other guests, and numerous audience members: They are denying children loving influences, they are bigots, they are misinformed, they read the Bible incorrectly, they sound like Mormons, they are resentful that they have put on more weight than their exes. One suburban-looking audience member angrily addressed each 'child protector' in turn, along the way coming up with a possible new pageant theme: 'And as for you, Miss Homophobia...'

The show was a typical mess, with guests yelling and audiences hooting at the best one-liners about bigotry or body weight, but the virulence with which homophobia was attacked is both typical of these shows and stunning. When Lake cut off a long-sideburned man's argument that 'it's a fact that the easiest way to get AIDS is by homosexual sex' ('That is not a fact, sir, that is not correct'), I found myself ready to start the chant of 'Go, Ricki! Go, Ricki!' that apparently wraps each taping. Even such elementary corrections, and even such a weird form of visibility and support, stands out sharply. Here, the homophobe is the deviant, the freak.

Lake's show is among the new breed of rowdy youth-oriented programs, celebrated as 'rock and roll television' by veteran Geraldo Rivera and denigrated as 'exploitalk' by cultural critic Neal Gabler. Their sibling shows, the older, tamer 'service' programs such as Oprah and Donahue, support 'alternative' sexualities and genders in quieter, but not weaker, ways. Peruse last year's Donahue: two teenage lesbian lovers ('Young, courageous people like yourself are blazing the way for other people,' says Donahue), a gay construction worker suing his gay boss for harassment ('There's only eight states that protect sexual persuasion,' his attorney reports), a bisexual minister, a black lesbian activist, and two members of the African-American theater group Pomo Afro Homos ('We're about trying to build a black gay community,' says one), the stars of the gender-crossing Priscilla, Queen of the Desert ('I have a lot of friends that are transsexuals,' declares an audience member, 'and they're the neatest people'), heterosexuals whose best friends are gay, lesbians starting families, gay teens, gay cops, gay men reuniting with their high school sweethearts, a gay talk show. This is a more diverse, self-possessed, and politically outspoken group of nonheterosexuals than I might find, say, at the gay bar around the corner. I can only imagine what this means for people experiencing sexual difference where none is locally visible.

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