U.S.S Enterprise LGBT-1701 (or) GAYS IN SPACE!

I love both Star Wars and Star Trek for very different reasons. I love the sense of epic struggle against totalitarianism in Star Wars, as well as the fact that it has what amounts to Awesome Zen Space Wizards. I love Star Trek for it's utopian future where mankind has united and poverty and need have been eliminated on Earth. As I've grown up, though, I've noticed that the things I love seem to be missing something that is pretty present in my own life.

Specifically, gay people.

Nope, no gays in space.

I am not the first person to notice that there seem to be no gays in space. I know that the LGBT fandom of Star Trek issued a boycott back in the late nineties surrounding Star Trek: Insurrection after 20 years of pushing for there to be even one gay character in the ship that represented a pluralistic and multicultural society. I'm going to end up focusing on Star Trek here, because let's face it, the sexuality in Star Wars amounts to “boy meets girl, saves girl, kisses girl, surprise incest.” Star Wars isn't really Sci-Fi, it's Fantasy in Space. There, I SAID IT. So, what is it that made it so difficult for a franchise as huge and utopian as Star Trek to incorporate gay characters?

My theory? It would have been weird to make it normal. By that, I specifically mean that, while having a gay character is no stranger than having a Japanese character on the Enterprise, including them would have been threatening to the producers. Consider, for a moment, that Star Trek: TNG had a openly gay character and it was never remarked upon and completely naturalized for the viewership. A world where it didn't matter existed. Could audiences of prime time TV at the time have handled this cognitive burst? Could they only have handled or processed gay characters in story lines that had to be specifically about sexuality? Would it have been so hard to portray them in the words of Leonard Nimoy, as “ neither objects of pity nor melodramatic attention?” This has to be what the producers were thinking, right?

About the time that Star Trek was ignoring gay characters, Babylon 5 incorporated a bisexual female character into their show, Susan Ivanova, who had a relationship with another telepathic woman. Babylon 5 also had a male/male marriage. Babylon 5, while a terrific show, was ultimately less popular than TNG and it begs a question- did mainstream audiences want a hetereonormative future?

The answer to why Star Trek did not have gay characters is vague. Brannon Braga, an executive producer for TNG. spoke in 2011 about the push and pull developing the show and the consideration of a normative gay culture on the Enterprise.

“[There was a]...constant back and forth about well how do we portray the spectrum of sexuality. There were people who felt very strongly that we should be showing casually, you know, just two guys together in the background in Ten Forward. At the time the decision was made not to do that and I think those same people would make a different decision now because I think, you know, that was 1989, well yeah about 89, 90, 91. I have no doubt that those same creative players wouldn’t feel so hesitant to have, you know, have been squeamish about a decision like that.”

No gays in space at all.

A quote like this sounds nice, like an “oops, we fucked up, but we're all allies now” but it doesn't explain the why very well. Why, when you have stars like Whoopi Goldberg rewriting their lines from heterosexual to sexuality-neutral commentary right there on set, could no one writing or producing the show wrap their heads around the idea that GAYS WILL EXIST IN THE FUTURE?

Suggesting that Next Generation was under pressure from affiliates to be a family friendly show, Braga described the decision to exclude LGBT characters as "not a forward thinking decision."

Let's jump from Sci-Fi to more fantastic television shows of the same approximate time period. Shows like Xena: Warrior Princess and Buffy the Vampire Slayer both featured either queer subtext or openly gay characters. It's strange to note that these shows were both wildly popular with hetero and queer audiences, so what was Star Trek afraid of? It's especially strange because the world of speculative fiction as long been tolerant of LGBT people in Sci-Fi fandom, even if it wasn't openly talked about for many decades.

NONE AT ALL

Even a casual analysis of geek/nerd sexual culture will show you a vast acceptance or at least tolerance of most sexual identities. Is this a response to the static, heteronormative sci-fi of the previous generation? I present this theory to the producers of Star Trek; you should have normative gay characters in space because that's THE WAY THE FUCKING WORLD ACTUALLY IS DIPSHITS.

 I believe that this shortcoming has real negative long term effects for the Star Trek franchise.  You cannot claim that you exist in a future that is without class or categorization and then ignore a massive real world group that has been marginalized for centuries.  Would it have killed someone to have two women holding hands in Ten Forward?  It's primitive. Up your game, Star Trek franchise.

It's on you, J.J. Abrams.