If I remember right, he was married to a man and they had a daughter. Doesn't that make Sulu's orientation pretty clear?
I found that interesting as well. Maybe his mentality was "just because I'm gay, doesn't mean my character has to be".
We were told that he was the husband off screen. On screen, he hugged a guy looking after his daughter. Could be the manny. Could be his brother. Paramount wanted the credit for for a gay character, lefty hoopla, but they were so afraid of the homophobic right, they did less than the bare minimum to achieve their goal for fear of provoking the moral majority.
They're not the only ones to do that. Look at the 2017 version of "Beauty and the Beast", supposedly the first Disney movie to feature an "openly gay" character. It featured little more than a 3-second scene with two male characters winding up dancing with each other, accidentally. Remember that a mere 18 years ago, gays could still by chucked in the slammer in certain states, just for acting on their same-sex attraction. Tremendous progress has been made, but equality does not come overnight, nor does it come without pushback.
Citation, article, reference, quote, link, where you read this? Do share, thanks! I thought Chakotay died, and Seven moved on? Or that he went back in time and got eaten by a couple of LA swingers?
I'm after a massive declaration of homosexuality. I want pride! Matching wedding rings on a four inch screen? Pishaw!
Watching Star Trek Beyond on a 4-inch screen is an affont to Justin Lin and everyone who worked on that movie.
As someone who grew up in a far more homophobic culture (and was infected by it for years), I liked that scene, and scenes like Stamets and Culber brushing their teeth together, just fine. Outrageous pride displays might be fun to watch, but they don't bring the gay community any closer to its ultimate goal of being accepted for who they are. The much less spectacular scenes with Sulu and Stamets and their respective partners... do.
I did not mean that I was after a handbag full of rainbows. If Sulu and his unnamed husband, in matching pjs, were to brush their teeth before sexlessly going to be bed together, I would believe that they were married, and possibly homosexuals.
That middle-aged TV executive would be Voyager's showrunner Brannon Braga. He made his fantasy real by dating Jeri Ryan.
From what I read of Takei's reaction, he seemed pretty ticked off about it, which put Simon Pegg on the defensive. They should have okayed it with Mr. Takei first. TOS Sulu was straight, according to Takei. That's the way he played it and that's what he and, as far as he knew, GR intended for the character's orientation. By making Sulu gay in the Kelvin films, they essentially torpedoed Orci and Kurtzmann's original premise, which was that these Star Trek characters had the same souls/bodies etc. as the original characters in the TOS series and films. This kind of retro re-definition of a character has happened in comics as well, with the X-men's Iceman and DC's original GL Alan Scott both being retroactively redefined as gay despite years of published history as being straight characters. I'm not a fan of this practice. Seven of 9 works because of her history, no problem there but I feel the intention and the actual written history of a character should matter, or why have any serialized fiction?
It's just the way of the world right now, I guess. I get it. LGBQT folks want to be accepted and want rights like everyone else. As a Catholic, I have to admit that I'm not very comfortable with that lifestyle but I do have some gay friends and acquaintances who are wonderful, kind folks. No one should hate anyone else for being different and everyone should be striving for a kinder, more equitable, and more civil society. That's what I'm teaching my kids every day. So people are really running with that ball now, particularly the comic book industry, which has many LGBQT creators. The thing I wish, now that people are calling for more diversity in media, is that they'd show religious diversity in characters along with race, gender, gender-identity, etc.. That used to be a thing with the X-Men, for instance. I know religion has been getting a really bad rap right now with the Catholic Church and other church scandals and the politicization of the Evangelical churches, but there are a lot of people who go to church and don't want to hate anyone. It'd be nice to see something of ourselves, something positive, in other media too. I feel like that's going away in Hollywood, the comics industry, etc., and it kind of hurts. I kind of feel like a man without a home on either side of the fence nowadays.
It doesn't help that the woke crowd regards any opposition, however indirect, as an attack. Earlier today, I suggested that LGBTQ was a sufficient acronym (as opposed to exotic combinations of letters, numbers, and plus signs that no one can remember), and one of the mods acted like I'd posted outright gay hate. As someone who has seen homophobia, maybe not at its worst (I never witnessed any actual anti-gay violence) but pretty bad, I can tell you... it's not.
I hear you Oddish. I guess some folks are overly sensitive. And I share your confusion. I feel like I've wrapped my head around L and Gs now and I've worked with a transexual (she was very nice) and have a transvestite coworker who I think is very cool. Beyond that, I have to say I don't get it. My sister has a non-binary godchild now and says she stumbles all over her pronouns with them. I told her I sympathize. The only thing I ask is that people please return the respect that I give them by not trying to tell me or try to influence the way I'm raising my kids. Right now, I can't even let them watch the Disney Channel shows but what can I do about that? Nothing. My wife is keeping up with the school situation. So far, so good. My wife and I are teaching them a traditional view of marriage in line with my Church and hers. I don't want them to be confused in any ways by all these other gender identities right now if possible, especially since they both seem to be straight and comfortable with who they are. That said, I think they're getting to the age when I'll have to tell them about the existence of all this other stuff. Like I said, even if I can't wrap my head around it and it conflicts with my faith, I believe every one has the right to their own dignity, respect, and justice as a human being and that's what I'm teaching my kids, not to condemn others for being different but to raise them up.
Sticking to the principles of your faith is NOT homophobia, though it may be called so by people who don't understand... or choose not to. Raising your children in that faith is what I would expect of any good parent. The woke crowd claims to be tolerant, but they are generally abusive to those who don't think like them. That is why, though I oppose hating people because of their race, sex, or orientation, I also oppose woke. Intolerance is deplorable no matter who practices it.
That's a slippery slope. Plenty of groups have been killed and/or horribly oppressed by people "sticking to the principles of their faith"..."
I don't know about other faiths because I was not raised in them. But, anyone claiming to be Christian who resorted to hatred, cruelty, oppression, or violence against those who were different from them was NOT sticking to the principles of his faith. He was violating them (Matt. 7:1, I John 4:20).