On Fri, 27 Feb 1998 14:26:12 -0500 "Lisa R. Barry" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

 

>I am attempting to compile a list of gay/lesbian/bisexual television

>characters from tv series.  It doesn't matter whether the series was a

>sit-com, drama, or whatever.  I am simply wanting a list for a class I am

 

Don't forget soap operas, which have been incorporating gay/lesbian

characters since the early 1980s.

 

One of the earliest was Lynn Carson (played by Donna Pescow in 1983) on All

My Children.  She was a child psychologist and the series used her to

explain what a lesbian was.  I am not kidding.  She would lecture the other

characters about how normal lesbians were.

 

As AIDS worked its way into soaps as a disease-of-the-moment it was

initially not presented through gay characters.  As I recall, there was an

All My Children character who contracted it through drug use.  Perhaps the

producers/writers felt this was a "safe" way to deal with the topic.

Subsequently, however, gays with AIDS have appeared. I'm having trouble

remembering the details, but As the World Turns had one such character in

the late '80s/early '90s.

 

Hope that helps,

 

----

Jeremy Butler

Associate Professor

[log in to unmask]

ScreenSite http://www.tcf.ua.edu/ScreenSite

Telecommunication & Film/University of Alabama/Tuscaloosa

 

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