A Big Week in LGBTQ Family TV

The Fosters
Photo credit: Disney—ABC Television Group.

It was a big week in the representation of LGBTQ families on television—across several shows, for several ages. But is LGBTQ diversity on TV as deep as that might make it seem?

First, ABC took four nights to show the eight-hour miniseries When We Rise, written by Dustin Lance Black and based on the memoir by Cleve Jones. I have long felt that having a sense of LGBTQ history helps us feel like we are not making up our lives and relationships entirely from scratch, and that it helps others realize we are not some new, untested social experiment. When We Rise does not cover all of LGBTQ history since the early 1970s, focusing mostly on people and events encountered by Jones, but offers enough of its sweep to convey that yes, we do have a history.

I was especially pleased to see parenting featured in the show. Real-life characters Diane Jones and Roma Guy face the challenges of becoming lesbian moms before sperm banks were a thing, and even discuss whether becoming moms in the first place is some kind of betrayal of the nascent lesbian sisterhood. And Jones himself is shown trying to become a foster dad, although the baby is removed from his care when the state discovers he is HIV positive.

Interested in more videos and readings on LGBTQ parenting history? Try this.

Another significant moment in LGBTQ family TV this week came on Freeform’s The Fosters, which features a two-mom family and their five kids. Their youngest child, Jude, is gay, and in a 2015 episode, was part of the youngest same-sex kiss on television. Two years on, and the character has grown. As most teens do, he is now thinking about sex, but finds little information in his school sex ed class, which is focused on straight sex. The lack of information spurs him to try and find it online, which leads him to a Grindr-like dating app and a potentially dangerous situation.

The Fosters is not the first show to touch on the need for LGBTQ youth to receive relevant and accurate sex ed. Glee did so back in 2011, when gay teen character Kurt’s father gave him “the talk.” But The Fosters’ episode was a more pointed condemnation of school health classes that exclude sexual health information for LGBTQ youth—which is still a lot of them. A 2015 HRC brief noted that “Across the United States, less than five percent of middle and high school students reported having positive discussions of LGBT-related topics in their health classes” and “Among Millennials surveyed in 2015, only 12 percent said their sex education class covered same-sex relationships.” Jude is portrayed as being younger than Kurt, too, emphasizing that even in middle school, this information is necessary and potentially life saving.

On a lighter note, Disney XD cartoon Star vs. The Forces of Evil has just shown same-sex male and female couples kissing, which shouldn’t really be news, but is. The Disney Channel dipped a cautious toe into LGBTQ representation before, with the show Good Luck Charlie featuring a two-mom family back in 2014.

In some ways, that’s a terrific week, with several networks—for the mainstream, for tweens/teens, and for younger kids—each advancing LGBTQ representation around children and parenting. But all three networks are part of the Disney—ABC Television Group, which speaks well for them but also throws down the gauntlet to other networks. Which ones will rise to the challenge?

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