When GLAAD published its yearly “Where We Are on TV” report last week, one might expect the gay activism organization might celebrate how far they’ve come on television. Now, it seems every television show has an LGBTQ character and shows have seemed to departed from the tired old stereotypes.
That is decidedly not what their report stated. Instead, they looked at the numbers of how many characters on television are LGBTQ and determined there were simply not enough. GLAAD President Sarah Kate Ellis wrote that these characters could help change the “hearts and minds” of viewers since most people “learn about trans people from what they see in television, movies, and news.”
Why do viewers learn about this topic on tv? Ellis explained that “less than one-quarter of Americans have a close friend or family member who is transgender.”
This brings up an interesting topic. How many gay people are there actually? A 2017 Gallup survey conducted “telephone interviews with a random sample of 340,604 U.S. adults,” and concluded that 4.5% of Americans identify as LGBT. Gallup determined “The percentage of millennials who identify as LGBT expanded from 7.3% to 8.1% from 2016 to 2017, and is up from 5.8% in 2012.”
Yet, GLAAD went on to announce their goal of ensuring that 20% of characters on regular series television will be LBGTQ by 2025:
GLAAD is calling on the industry to ensure that 20 percent of series regular characters on primetime scripted broadcast series are LGBTQ by 2025. Further, we would challenge all platforms to make sure that within the next two years, half of LGBTQ characters on every platform are people of color. While broadcast has actually hit this mark two years in a row, cable and streaming have yet to reach this goal. These two steps are key moves towards ensuring that entertainment reflects the world in which it is created and the audience who consumes it.
Wow. That seems like a bit much, don’t you think?
The Daily Wire noted, “Using GLAAD’s data, LGBTQ television characters would outweigh the actual LGBTQ population by 40%. Using Gallup’s data, the difference would be even more stark, with LGBT characters on television outweighing the actual LGBT population by 77.5% by 2025.”
This is the latest evidence that the LBGTQ activists are not aiming to merely gain equitable representation, but wider cultural acceptance amongst people who have religious and moral beliefs that prohibit homosexuality.
Instead of attempting to “change hearts” by shoving this over-representation down the collective throats of viewers, how about television writers just attempt to tell good stories?
Image Credit: Pixabay
Hat Tip: The Daily Wire