No gray on gay

Maybe the coming out odyssey of Betty's nephew on Ugly Betty is entirely realistic, for after all, given the still rather sparse presence of gay portrayals in our media (including even Broadway musicals written by gay librettists and set to music by gay composers), a young gay boy would first think that he's straight and even have crushes on girls. I know because I dated one such boy in high school.

And yet it seems to me like the writers are beating us over the head with excessively obvious hints that Justin Suarez (Mark Indelicato) is gay. In last week's episode, Marc (Michael Urie), playing a ridiculous pronoun game, got Justin to reveal the name of his acting class crush: Lily, a she. In this week's episode, however, we saw happen what the writers apparently think we couldn't see coming from a mile away: that the real object of Justin's desire in the love triangle is Austin (Ryan McGinniss), who didn't get to kiss Lily onstage but did backstage, and made sure Justin saw them. In the jealous confrontation between the boys that starts out heteronormatively enough, they kiss. It is as obvious to the viewers as it is surprising to the two characters, who had not even admitted to themselves their true orientation.

But let's not forget that straight and gay is not black and white. Whatever gay inclinations all of us have remain for most of us unacted upon to our deaths. However, prior to the new guidelines on homosexuality for the military, bisexuality was just as damning as homosexuality. With this in mind I watched on DVD an episode from JAG's tenth season, "Heart of Darkness." The main plot of that episode concerns the trial in an Islamic court of the "American warlord." In the subplot, Big Bud (Jeff MacKay) is recalled to active duty, something which he wants to avoid at all costs so that he may continue to run his bar and referee women's wrestling.

So Big Bud, after talking to his son the JAG lawyer, gets the idea of faking an addiction to meth. The female corpsman examining him medically sees right through this pretense. Frustrated, Bud claims he's gay and that he finds men attractive. So the woman gets the idea of whispering either sweet nothings or dirty talk in the man's ear (I wonder if female medical professionals in the military in real life would do that), and seeing the, ahem, tent, in the man's hospital gown, is convinced that she has completely foiled his attempt to avoid the recall by manipulating the "don't ask, don't tell" policy.

For those of us who watched the show regularly, we know that Big Bud is very much straight, fitting some of the very worst stereotypes of the salty sailor. Therefore, it doesn't occur to us that Bud could be bisexual; whether out of necessity or legitimate desire doesn't actually matter under the military's policy. But it should occur to someone evaluating the fitness for duty of a given patient. All that the female corpsman proved with her performance is that Bud finds her attractive, it doesn't rule out that some man could arouse the same reaction from the subject. Though I suppose we could argue that it is the expression on Bud's face after the corpsman points out his 'tent' that really proves that he's in fact neither gay nor bi, an expression that says "Okay, you caught me in a lie."