A Queer Return
Season two of Queer as Folk.

By Kathryn Jean Lopez, NRO Executive Editor
January 26-27, 2002

he second season of the American version of the British series Queer as Folk arrived earlier this month, and viewers in suspense got some answers, however staid. But first a rewind.

The first season closed with a typical dramatic cliffhanger. Justin, a high-school senior, asked his 30-year-old lover to the prom. Brian said no — laughed at him, in fact. Justin went with an otherwise dateless, straight female friend. At the prom, Brian surprised Justin — and everyone else. Brian showed and danced "The Last Dance" with Justin. After the dance, Brian and Justin said goodbye in the parking garage. A classmate who has long hated Justin for being gay attacked him with a bat. The season ended and you didn't know if he was going to make it.

At the start of the news season, we learn Justin is in bad shape, but recovering.

The series has been described as a slightly better-than-average "straight" soap opera in terms of dialogue (the graphic male gay bedroom scenes are unparalled in the genre, however). Yet in some ways, Queer is an amazing show. It portrays the realities of homosexual "dating" — namely promiscuity. When the Centers for Disease Control said AIDS was an equal-opportunity killer, everyone bought the line, while secretly knowing there were more gays than straights dying of the disease. Queer shows us the lifestyle that puts homosexuals at risk — the dangerous, unseemly world of gay baths and nightclubs.

Queer's level of gay promiscuity is unrivaled by anything else on TV — or at least anything else that you are encouraged to watch on your daily travels. The commuter routes around New York City are pasted with ads for the new season of Queer. On television it's hard to escape the promotions. Even the Country Music Channel (the Country Music Channel!) runs spots for the show.

As jarring as the in-your-faceness of it is — it is a disturbing series (which doesn't make nonpromiscious gays delighted, I imagine) — there is something oddly refreshing about Queer as Folk's dose of political incorrectness. Or at least there was. With the start of season two, however, one wonders if the show "gets" itself.

The kid, Chris Hobbs, who nearly killed Justin, is tried in court. The judge finds him to be a straight-laced kid who was instigated by a "provocative" dance. He gets off with no jail time. No jailtime?

Then there's the character of bizarrely eccentric Sharon Gless, who regularly encourages her 30-year-old son Michael to go out and get some "action." She enters this season wailing about crackpot Christians and rallying PFLAGers (Parents, Family, and Friends of Lesbians and Gays) to march on Washington in reaction to the failed justice in the case of Justin's beating.

That's pretty sad, and oh-so mainstream. If you want that level of scripting, you don't need to bother paying for Showtime — you can get that anywhere.

You might not remember Jesse Dirkhising. His name should be (but is not) as familiar to Americans as Matthew Shepard's, the gay teenager who in the fall of 1998 was lured from a bar by two men, beaten unconscious, tied to a fence, and left to freeze to death in Wyoming. It was a vicious attack and it was, rightfully, universally condemned.

Jesse Dirkhising was 13 years old when his two gay neighbors invited him to their house, drugged him, tied him to a bed, gagged him with his underwear, and duct-taped his mouth. They raped the boy for two hours and in unspeakable ways. When they were through, they left him to suffocate.

But you most likely never heard of this case — or if you have, you're in the minority. William McGowan points out in Coloring the News that Dirkhising didn't pass the political-correctness test as far as the news media was concerned.

A Nexis database search finds over 3,000 stories on Matthew Shepard's murder in the month after it happened. The New York Times alone ran 195 stories on the Shepard case — which, of course, became synonymous with homophobia. Comparatively, only 46 stories would appear nationally about Dirkhising. Many of the major media outlets — both print and television — entirely ignored Dirkhising's death: The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, CNN, ABC, CBS, and NBC never ran a thing about the case. (NRO and Andrew Sullivan on his website and in The New Republic were on the case early and often.)

Despite queries, McGowan writes, "no one admitted the obvious": that "the Dirkhising story was too hot to handle because it raised the explosive issue of gay pedophilia and because it threatened the sanctity of the gays-as-victims script which had attained status of holy writ in the media."

Queer as Folk is supposedly "groundbreaking" television, but if you're gonna be groundbreaking, just do it.

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