Malinda Lo

Like the majority of Americans, I am happy that we have elected Barack Obama as our next president, a person who, in his biracial, transnational roots, puts a much improved face on the United States. However, I am also deeply disappointed that Californians have voted to revoke my rights and to discriminate against me as a lesbian. And I can’t help but connect the passage of Proposition 8 with this week’s shocking news that ABC has ordered the de-gaying of Grey’s Anatomy.

Anyone who has studied popular culture or cultural studies will be familiar with the idea that entertainment reflects broader cultural beliefs. I also believe that the connection between entertainment and cultural beliefs is an active one–I do think that entertainment has the power to change the way people feel about issues. Americans have seen a man of color in the White House on long-running, popular television series three times recently: twice on 24, with President David Palmer (Dennis Haysbert) and his brother, President Wayne Palmer (D.B. Woodside), and on The West Wing, with President Matt Santos (Jimmy Smits). The media has even noted distinct and sometimes uncanny parallels between Matt Santos’ fictional election campaign and Barack Obama’s.

That means that Americans have gotten accustomed to seeing a man of color in the White House. (I might add that the only woman in the fictional White House in recent times, Geena Davis in Commander in Chief, didn’t fare so well. I’m hoping Cherry Jones in the next season of 24 does a little better.)

Anyone who doubts the power of TV to naturalize a previously rejected idea would do well to remember what happened after Ellen DeGeneres came out in 1997. No, it didn’t make everybody support gay people, but it made a difference one person at a time. It made a lot of parents take a more open and accepting look at their own children. This year after she married Portia de Rossi, the outpouring of support for her was incredible to see.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough. And I think it’s partly because her relationship with Portia is a celebrity relationship. We can still look at them from afar and admire them as colorful icons of Hollywood liberalism; they don’t necessarily speak to middle Americans as a reality. We need a lesbian or gay couple on prime-time television, on a highly rated TV show, and we need them to be main characters with prominent story lines. They must have real, whole lives, including relationships. And let’s be honest: these lesbians need to be popular characters.

Yes, I know there’s a great gay couple on Brothers & Sisters (also on ABC), but Brothers & Sisters has ranked at No. 37 and 38 in the ratings since it debuted. Grey’s Anatomy has always been a top 10 show, with several million more viewers than Brothers & Sisters gets. The Callica story line was set to be one of the most highly watched lesbian story lines on prime-time television ever. ABC’s decision to fire Brooke Smith and de-gay future story lines, in retrospect, seems like a forecast for Proposition 8 (which, incidentally, won by a slim margin in Los Angeles County, where those ABC suits work).

To all those ABC execs who decided to pull the plug on the Callica story line because of its “explicit” nature (since when does intelligently written, humorous metaphor = explicit sexuality?), I am ashamed of you. I thought you–the network previously known as Gay-B-C–were more enlightened. If, as the L.A. Times suggests, the reason for Smith’s firing was because she wasn’t thin and hot enough to play a lesbian on TV, then Hollywood really is as pathetic as everyone says it is.

But it’s not only Hollywood suits who are to blame. I read a number of the comments online about the Grey’s Anatomy de-gaying, and it was incredibly disheartening to see so many people disparaging Brooke Smith’s character because she was unattractive, or rejecting the Callica story line because it made them “uncomfortable.” I have no doubt that ABC took the opinions of those bigoted viewers to heart before they decided to de-gay Grey’s. And if Americans can’t stand to see lesbians in a relationship on TV, do you think they’re going to support them getting married in real life? Not by a long shot.

It makes me think that we’re going to have to wait long and hard for same-sex marriage to be a possibility in California again.