Same Sex Marriage

[Bry_Sinclair]

When (being optimistic here) the next series comes along and we have our established homosexual character, the one thing they should avoid doing at all costs is have a story where an alien takes offense to him/her enjoying relations with their own sex. Has any species ever taken offense to any man/woman relationship (except for the J'naii but they're predominately gender neutral so that doesn't really count)?

Such an episode would go beyond cliché, into repugnant and tacky. If you wouldn't write a story about a straight character based solely on the orientation then you don't need to with a gay one.

Simple as that.

 

[Romulus Prime]

The type of character I'd want to see featured would be a Romulan nympho who always wears "Dabo Girl" style clothing and gets by the uniform regs by claiming it's culturally based attire...

...but I know I'm in the minority.

 

[Bry_Sinclair]

The type of character I'd want to see featured would be a Romulan nympho who always wears "Dabo Girl" style clothing and gets by the uniform regs by claiming it's culturally based attire...

...but I know I'm in the minority.

Like they did with T'Pol?

 

[Nerys Myk]

I really hate politics and social causes getting pushed in mediums.

Er, have you watched Star Trek?????

The type of character I'd want to see featured would be a Romulan nympho who always wears "Dabo Girl" style clothing and gets by the uniform regs by claiming it's culturally based attire...

...but I know I'm in the minority.

Like they did with T'Pol?

Come on, T'Pol was usually covered from neck to feet. By Trek standards that's practically a burqa!

 

[nightwind1]

It has been my experience that any time a political agenda is pushed too hard it feels preachy and the show, the movie, the cartoon, the musical band, the video game, or whatever medium it's in, feels perverted like a manipulative PSA. If your primary goal is to push an agenda, you become that annoying preacher guy that wants to tell you how wrong you are, and change your ways, and everyone think like me or you're bad.

I really hate politics and social causes getting pushed in mediums.

You mean like:

Errand of Mercy?
The City On The Edge Of Forever?
A Private Little War?
Bread and Circuses?
A Taste of Armageddon?
Let That Be Your Last Battlefield?
The Omega Glory?
Patterns of Force?
STVI: The Undiscovered Country?

 

[T'Girl]

There is something about pushing a socio-political idea that just perverts the natural entertainment of a medium.

You don't think that depicting a future were there are no gays to be seen isn't an attempt to advance a "socio-political idea" that gays somehow don't exist in the future. That not having gay characters because it might just upset an increasingly smaller segment of the population isn't putting forward an agenda.

catering to a target demographic

And which demographic might that be? Let's see, there's gays of course, that's about a tenth of the total populace. Then there's the youth of the world, in case you don't watch programming aimed at the below age twenty-five demographic, gays characters are common. Who else? There's the people who have a understanding that gays are a normal part of the Human landscape.

 

[Mars]

Thinking over the past few months on my own, that Star Trek should have the first same sex couple in their next Star Trek television series – as Star Trek has opened new doors for people. Star Trek during TOS was the first show to ever show a kiss between a black woman and a white man. Star Trek was a first for a number of taboo type conflicts since the 1960’s. Star Trek, would not take the leading role with a same sex marriage, but, it can follower.

To make it more acceptable, I would say it may be more acceptable if the same sex married couple are female then male.

How about neither? What if the couple was neither male nor female, as the race consists of just one hermaphoditic gender, thus any individual can mate with any other to produce offspring, homosexuality is a nonissue with this race since there is only one gender and it contains the aparatus to fetilize and gestate offspring, there really is no other way to mate for them.

 

[The Castellan]

Thinking over the past few months on my own, that Star Trek should have the first same sex couple in their next Star Trek television series – as Star Trek has opened new doors for people. Star Trek during TOS was the first show to ever show a kiss between a black woman and a white man. Star Trek was a first for a number of taboo type conflicts since the 1960’s. Star Trek, would not take the leading role with a same sex marriage, but, it can follower.

To make it more acceptable, I would say it may be more acceptable if the same sex married couple are female then male.

How about neither? What if the couple was neither male nor female, as the race consists of just one hermaphoditic gender, thus any individual can mate with any other to produce offspring, homosexuality is a nonissue with this race since there is only one gender and it contains the aparatus to fetilize and gestate offspring, there really is no other way to mate for them.

Having dated a hermaphrodite, I'd be for that.
If they are cute, get me their numbers.

 

[NebulaClassGuy]

So what people want is a gay token in the next Star Trek?

If the gay is flamboyant, gay rights people will go ape over the stereotype of gays and claim that the producers are homophobic.

If the gay happens to just be gay, and it has no baring on his personality, than what's the point in making him gay?

If the idea is to "push the envelope" I think it's a little late for that. Being pro-gay isn't the least bit new, edgy, racy, or risky; it's the norm.

If Enterprise had a openly gay main character in 2001, it would have kept with the Trek trend of pushing for social equality.

But having a gay main character on any show today is about 10 years behind.

Hollywood, and its celebrities, supporting gay rights and gay marriage, is so common place it's like finding the King James bible in a church.
To be a Hollywood celeb, it's pretty much mandatory that you wave a rainbow flag.

Heck if you want to be racy, than create a genuine homophobic character, I mean DSM clinical homophobia where he is terrified that all the males around him are secretly gay and are trying to get him into homoerotic situations. Plenty of opportunities for laughs and we'd be laughing at homophobes.

We got Marilyn Manson, Lady Gaga, Kate Perry, and Ke$ha all supporting gay rights, putting gay kisses in their videos, and writing pro-gay songs.

I just hope the token gay character doesn't become as annoying as the token black character. Too often I see a black TV character and it is so crystal clear that he is just a token. I remember back in the day every show that came out had to have that one token black. Just google "black BFF trope"

The problem isn't that a character is black, it's that they are only there for the illusion of racial diversity. Token characters suck. Again a character can be black and interesting, or they can just be there to be black, and that's annoying.

We got white producers, white directors, and white television network owners, creating shows that will be watched by mostly white people, then they remember at the last moment they have to cater to this and that demographic, so they just shove a member of this and that demographic in there at the last moment, creating a few boring tokens that no one cares about. The black token is so famous and over used that South Park actually put in a black character and named him Token, to mock shows sticking black tokens in their shows. Gays are becoming the next Hollywood demographic token.

And I've heard talk in this thread about cross dressers or transvestites. But we already had Corprol Klinger from mash. I don't want to see a rehash of this for the sake of enforcing the newest trendiest former taboo.
And what is male and female clothing? In the future the style of clothing would change so much that maybe it's normal for guys to wear skirts and carry a purse, and for women to wear pants and a tie. And so the cross dressing male would be wearing pants and a tie, like a woman! That's so racy and cutting edge!
But if the next Star Trek wants to be cutting edge, here are some less used tokens.
The token fat person (ain't seen a lot of fat people in Star Trek, I guess Star Trek is anti obese).
The token Musslim
The token midget. Midgets, or little people, or what ever they call themselves, they watch Star Trek, I'm sure they feel underrepresented.

I think gays are becoming enough of a token as it is. Here is a link with a guy talking about token gays in Hollywood movies and reality shows http://stalepopcornau.blogspot.com/2009/12/token-gay.html

And here is a link from a gay man who is tired of girls and women wanting a gay guy friend like a fashion accessory. http://www.lemondrop.com/2010/01/29/i-dont-want-to-be-your-token-gay/
And I have to agree with this guy, that so many girls want a gay friend so that they can say "look at my gay friend".

I wouldn't be against a character who just happens to be gay, but I really wouldn't want to see any new shows coming out that have a token gay character just to ram liberalism and equality down our throats. I hate public service announcements, and I hate it when TV tries to ram a PSA down your throat under the guys of "entertainment".

Now what might be interesting is if two guys on the new Star Trek fell in love around the 3rd or 4th season, and which two guys it was that fell in love wasn't planned from the beginning, that way these characters could exist as well rounded characters who just happen to be gay.

And if all of this comes down to "I don't care about gays, I just want Star Trek to push gay marriage, I'm all about my politics" OK then how about if Star Trek just has one episode about two men who want to get married on a world that doesn't allow it, and they're given asylum on the star ship and the captain performs a wedding for them. And then we never see these two again, and we get the message out "vote for gay marriage rights".
That way we don't have to deal with poorly conceived tokens who end up being offensive to the target demographic that the producers were pandering to.

This is my big issue with "New Voyages"... they make it a point of being gay, when in reality, nobody in Trek's time would give a flying frak. Star Trek's universe is so wholly tolerant of any and every one and thing, that being gay is literally nothing special. To put it bluntly, gays aren't in the least bit important in Trek's future, lol.

This is why any inclusion of a gay character would be simply to satisfy a 21st century audience, but it would still have zero real meaning, because in the context of Star Trek's future, there'd be nothing special about said character or character couple. Sisko was nothing special, either. We saw at least two black male Admirals in TNG, and we also saw female Admirals and Captains in TNG, so Janeway wasn't special, either.

The only way to do a gay character, and treat in in a 21st century context, would be to have some alien gay character, whose "gayness" happens to be frowned-upon within their society, and our UFP friends would kindly explain to that alien culture how backwards it is and why. Something like the TNG episode "The Outcast".

 

[Mars]

So what people want is a gay token in the next Star Trek?

If the gay is flamboyant, gay rights people will go ape over the stereotype of gays and claim that the producers are homophobic.

If the gay happens to just be gay, and it has no baring on his personality, than what's the point in making him gay?

If the idea is to "push the envelope" I think it's a little late for that. Being pro-gay isn't the least bit new, edgy, racy, or risky; it's the norm.

If Enterprise had a openly gay main character in 2001, it would have kept with the Trek trend of pushing for social equality.

But having a gay main character on any show today is about 10 years behind.

Hollywood, and its celebrities, supporting gay rights and gay marriage, is so common place it's like finding the King James bible in a church.
To be a Hollywood celeb, it's pretty much mandatory that you wave a rainbow flag.

Heck if you want to be racy, than create a genuine homophobic character, I mean DSM clinical homophobia where he is terrified that all the males around him are secretly gay and are trying to get him into homoerotic situations. Plenty of opportunities for laughs and we'd be laughing at homophobes.

We got Marilyn Manson, Lady Gaga, Kate Perry, and Ke$ha all supporting gay rights, putting gay kisses in their videos, and writing pro-gay songs.

I just hope the token gay character doesn't become as annoying as the token black character. Too often I see a black TV character and it is so crystal clear that he is just a token. I remember back in the day every show that came out had to have that one token black. Just google "black BFF trope"

The problem isn't that a character is black, it's that they are only there for the illusion of racial diversity. Token characters suck. Again a character can be black and interesting, or they can just be there to be black, and that's annoying.

We got white producers, white directors, and white television network owners, creating shows that will be watched by mostly white people, then they remember at the last moment they have to cater to this and that demographic, so they just shove a member of this and that demographic in there at the last moment, creating a few boring tokens that no one cares about. The black token is so famous and over used that South Park actually put in a black character and named him Token, to mock shows sticking black tokens in their shows. Gays are becoming the next Hollywood demographic token.

And I've heard talk in this thread about cross dressers or transvestites. But we already had Corprol Klinger from mash. I don't want to see a rehash of this for the sake of enforcing the newest trendiest former taboo.
And what is male and female clothing? In the future the style of clothing would change so much that maybe it's normal for guys to wear skirts and carry a purse, and for women to wear pants and a tie. And so the cross dressing male would be wearing pants and a tie, like a woman! That's so racy and cutting edge!
But if the next Star Trek wants to be cutting edge, here are some less used tokens.
The token fat person (ain't seen a lot of fat people in Star Trek, I guess Star Trek is anti obese).
The token Musslim
The token midget. Midgets, or little people, or what ever they call themselves, they watch Star Trek, I'm sure they feel underrepresented.

I think gays are becoming enough of a token as it is. Here is a link with a guy talking about token gays in Hollywood movies and reality shows http://stalepopcornau.blogspot.com/2009/12/token-gay.html

And here is a link from a gay man who is tired of girls and women wanting a gay guy friend like a fashion accessory. http://www.lemondrop.com/2010/01/29/i-dont-want-to-be-your-token-gay/
And I have to agree with this guy, that so many girls want a gay friend so that they can say "look at my gay friend".

I wouldn't be against a character who just happens to be gay, but I really wouldn't want to see any new shows coming out that have a token gay character just to ram liberalism and equality down our throats. I hate public service announcements, and I hate it when TV tries to ram a PSA down your throat under the guys of "entertainment".

Now what might be interesting is if two guys on the new Star Trek fell in love around the 3rd or 4th season, and which two guys it was that fell in love wasn't planned from the beginning, that way these characters could exist as well rounded characters who just happen to be gay.

And if all of this comes down to "I don't care about gays, I just want Star Trek to push gay marriage, I'm all about my politics" OK then how about if Star Trek just has one episode about two men who want to get married on a world that doesn't allow it, and they're given asylum on the star ship and the captain performs a wedding for them. And then we never see these two again, and we get the message out "vote for gay marriage rights".
That way we don't have to deal with poorly conceived tokens who end up being offensive to the target demographic that the producers were pandering to.

This is my big issue with "New Voyages"... they make it a point of being gay, when in reality, nobody in Trek's time would give a flying frak. Star Trek's universe is so wholly tolerant of any and every one and thing, that being gay is literally nothing special. To put it bluntly, gays aren't in the least bit important in Trek's future, lol.

This is why any inclusion of a gay character would be simply to satisfy a 21st century audience, but it would still have zero real meaning, because in the context of Star Trek's future, there'd be nothing special about said character or character couple. Sisko was nothing special, either. We saw at least two black male Admirals in TNG, and we also saw female Admirals and Captains in TNG, so Janeway wasn't special, either.

The only way to do a gay character, and treat in in a 21st century context, would be to have some alien gay character, whose "gayness" happens to be frowned-upon within their society, and our UFP friends would kindly explain to that alien culture how backwards it is and why. Something like the TNG episode "The Outcast".

Though I think there is at least one hermaphroditic race in the Federation, McKenzie Calhoun from the New Frontier Series had a crew member that was a Hermaphrodite, not simply an ambiguous gender as sometimes occurs in humans, but a whole race of people that reproduce with only one sex, they exchange chromosomes but have only one kind, technically I guess you might consider them to be all female, because they all have organs for bearing children and also organs for fertilizing others. To a race of those, there is nothing special about a gay couple, and they probably wouldn't understand why it was important to have a member of a species with two genders prefer their own gender.

Another possibility is a planet settled by clones, the clones are all female and lesbians, problem is this wouldn't last, the clones aren't perfect copies of each other and some of them would revert to normal sexual patterns and prefer male partners, there are other things besides genetics involved. So Space Amazons are a possibility, and there are probably a few planets like this as well. So many different aliens, that seeing a group of humans that aren't quite typical of their race probably won't raise any eyebrows, assuming the species has eyebrows.

 

[Maurice]

TThis is why any inclusion of a gay character would be simply to satisfy a 21st century audience, but it would still have zero real meaning...

I'll let Whoopi Goldberg take this one:

Whoopi Goldberg even stated when she first saw the character of Uhura on the show, that she yelled “Momma! There’s a black lady on TV, and she ain’t no maid!”

—Today I Found Out website​

Is that insignificant in your eyes? Uhura simply being there and no issue being made of her "race" was what was symbolic. The same would be true of a gay character who wasn't an "issue" or a stereotype (sassy gay crewman, butch lesbian engineer). "All people are included," is the most profound political statement the show could make.

 

[The Castellan]

So what people want is a gay token in the next Star Trek?

If the gay is flamboyant, gay rights people will go ape over the stereotype of gays and claim that the producers are homophobic.

If the gay happens to just be gay, and it has no baring on his personality, than what's the point in making him gay?

If the idea is to "push the envelope" I think it's a little late for that. Being pro-gay isn't the least bit new, edgy, racy, or risky; it's the norm.

If Enterprise had a openly gay main character in 2001, it would have kept with the Trek trend of pushing for social equality.

But having a gay main character on any show today is about 10 years behind.

Hollywood, and its celebrities, supporting gay rights and gay marriage, is so common place it's like finding the King James bible in a church.
To be a Hollywood celeb, it's pretty much mandatory that you wave a rainbow flag.

Heck if you want to be racy, than create a genuine homophobic character, I mean DSM clinical homophobia where he is terrified that all the males around him are secretly gay and are trying to get him into homoerotic situations. Plenty of opportunities for laughs and we'd be laughing at homophobes.

We got Marilyn Manson, Lady Gaga, Kate Perry, and Ke$ha all supporting gay rights, putting gay kisses in their videos, and writing pro-gay songs.

I just hope the token gay character doesn't become as annoying as the token black character. Too often I see a black TV character and it is so crystal clear that he is just a token. I remember back in the day every show that came out had to have that one token black. Just google "black BFF trope"

The problem isn't that a character is black, it's that they are only there for the illusion of racial diversity. Token characters suck. Again a character can be black and interesting, or they can just be there to be black, and that's annoying.

We got white producers, white directors, and white television network owners, creating shows that will be watched by mostly white people, then they remember at the last moment they have to cater to this and that demographic, so they just shove a member of this and that demographic in there at the last moment, creating a few boring tokens that no one cares about. The black token is so famous and over used that South Park actually put in a black character and named him Token, to mock shows sticking black tokens in their shows. Gays are becoming the next Hollywood demographic token.

And I've heard talk in this thread about cross dressers or transvestites. But we already had Corprol Klinger from mash. I don't want to see a rehash of this for the sake of enforcing the newest trendiest former taboo.
And what is male and female clothing? In the future the style of clothing would change so much that maybe it's normal for guys to wear skirts and carry a purse, and for women to wear pants and a tie. And so the cross dressing male would be wearing pants and a tie, like a woman! That's so racy and cutting edge!
But if the next Star Trek wants to be cutting edge, here are some less used tokens.
The token fat person (ain't seen a lot of fat people in Star Trek, I guess Star Trek is anti obese).
The token Musslim
The token midget. Midgets, or little people, or what ever they call themselves, they watch Star Trek, I'm sure they feel underrepresented.

I think gays are becoming enough of a token as it is. Here is a link with a guy talking about token gays in Hollywood movies and reality shows http://stalepopcornau.blogspot.com/2009/12/token-gay.html

And here is a link from a gay man who is tired of girls and women wanting a gay guy friend like a fashion accessory. http://www.lemondrop.com/2010/01/29/i-dont-want-to-be-your-token-gay/
And I have to agree with this guy, that so many girls want a gay friend so that they can say "look at my gay friend".

I wouldn't be against a character who just happens to be gay, but I really wouldn't want to see any new shows coming out that have a token gay character just to ram liberalism and equality down our throats. I hate public service announcements, and I hate it when TV tries to ram a PSA down your throat under the guys of "entertainment".

Now what might be interesting is if two guys on the new Star Trek fell in love around the 3rd or 4th season, and which two guys it was that fell in love wasn't planned from the beginning, that way these characters could exist as well rounded characters who just happen to be gay.

And if all of this comes down to "I don't care about gays, I just want Star Trek to push gay marriage, I'm all about my politics" OK then how about if Star Trek just has one episode about two men who want to get married on a world that doesn't allow it, and they're given asylum on the star ship and the captain performs a wedding for them. And then we never see these two again, and we get the message out "vote for gay marriage rights".
That way we don't have to deal with poorly conceived tokens who end up being offensive to the target demographic that the producers were pandering to.

This is my big issue with "New Voyages"... they make it a point of being gay, when in reality, nobody in Trek's time would give a flying frak. Star Trek's universe is so wholly tolerant of any and every one and thing, that being gay is literally nothing special. To put it bluntly, gays aren't in the least bit important in Trek's future, lol.

This is why any inclusion of a gay character would be simply to satisfy a 21st century audience, but it would still have zero real meaning, because in the context of Star Trek's future, there'd be nothing special about said character or character couple. Sisko was nothing special, either. We saw at least two black male Admirals in TNG, and we also saw female Admirals and Captains in TNG, so Janeway wasn't special, either.

The only way to do a gay character, and treat in in a 21st century context, would be to have some alien gay character, whose "gayness" happens to be frowned-upon within their society, and our UFP friends would kindly explain to that alien culture how backwards it is and why. Something like the TNG episode "The Outcast".

Though I think there is at least one hermaphroditic race in the Federation, McKenzie Calhoun from the New Frontier Series had a crew member that was a Hermaphrodite, not simply an ambiguous gender as sometimes occurs in humans, but a whole race of people that reproduce with only one sex, they exchange chromosomes but have only one kind, technically I guess you might consider them to be all female, because they all have organs for bearing children and also organs for fertilizing others. To a race of those, there is nothing special about a gay couple, and they probably wouldn't understand why it was important to have a member of a species with two genders prefer their own gender.

Another possibility is a planet settled by clones, the clones are all female and lesbians, problem is this wouldn't last, the clones aren't perfect copies of each other and some of them would revert to normal sexual patterns and prefer male partners, there are other things besides genetics involved. So Space Amazons are a possibility, and there are probably a few planets like this as well. So many different aliens, that seeing a group of humans that aren't quite typical of their race probably won't raise any eyebrows, assuming the species has eyebrows.

Some animals can change their sex. Also, some living things reproduce asexually.

 

[Mars]

TThis is why any inclusion of a gay character would be simply to satisfy a 21st century audience, but it would still have zero real meaning...

I'll let Whoopi Goldberg take this one:

Whoopi Goldberg even stated when she first saw the character of Uhura on the show, that she yelled “Momma! There’s a black lady on TV, and she ain’t no maid!”

—Today I Found Out website​

Is that insignificant in your eyes? Uhura simply being there and no issue being made of her "race" was what was symbolic. The same would be true of a gay character who wasn't an "issue" or a stereotype (sassy gay crewman, butch lesbian engineer). "All people are included," is a most profound political statement the show could make.

But why would an issue be made of her race? There are so many races in the Star Trek Universe, that an observer seeing a female attracted to another female might automatically conclude that is how that particular species reproduces. Some species lay eggs for instance, another might bud out through parthenogenesis. A human that behaved somewhat odd for a human would gather no notice in a crowd full of aliens, some of who have three genders or more!

 

[Maurice]

TThis is why any inclusion of a gay character would be simply to satisfy a 21st century audience, but it would still have zero real meaning...

I'll let Whoopi Goldberg take this one:

Whoopi Goldberg even stated when she first saw the character of Uhura on the show, that she yelled “Momma! There’s a black lady on TV, and she ain’t no maid!”

—Today I Found Out website​

Is that insignificant in your eyes? Uhura simply being there and no issue being made of her "race" was what was symbolic. The same would be true of a gay character who wasn't an "issue" or a stereotype (sassy gay crewman, butch lesbian engineer). "All people are included," is a most profound political statement the show could make.

But why would an issue be made of her race? There are so many races in the Star Trek Universe, that an observer seeing a female attracted to another female might automatically conclude that is how that particular species reproduces. Some species lay eggs for instance, another might bud out through parthenogenesis. A human that behaved somewhat odd for a human would gather no notice in a crowd full of aliens, some of who have three genders or more!

What the HELL does that have to do with the topic I was referring to: a show's portrayal of gay characters?

 

[Mars]

I'll let Whoopi Goldberg take this one:

​

Is that insignificant in your eyes? Uhura simply being there and no issue being made of her "race" was what was symbolic. The same would be true of a gay character who wasn't an "issue" or a stereotype (sassy gay crewman, butch lesbian engineer). "All people are included," is a most profound political statement the show could make.

But why would an issue be made of her race? There are so many races in the Star Trek Universe, that an observer seeing a female attracted to another female might automatically conclude that is how that particular species reproduces. Some species lay eggs for instance, another might bud out through parthenogenesis. A human that behaved somewhat odd for a human would gather no notice in a crowd full of aliens, some of who have three genders or more!

What the HELL does that have to do with the topic I was referring to: a show's portrayal of gay characters?

The show doesn't portray them much at all, but there is one character that is a member of a race of Hermaphrodites in the New Frontier series, (s)he is a member of the crew of the USS Excalibur captained by McKenzie Calhoun. Various other novels portray homosexual characters, but they are not as interesting as a race of hermaphrodites.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

A member of a race of hermaphrodites isn't the same as a gay human. A gay alien, even a Vulcan, Romulan, Klingon, or member of any other species canonically known to have two distinct sexes analogous to human sexes, also isn't the same as a gay human. Cf the Whoopi quote.

 

[Mars]

A member of a race of hermaphrodites isn't the same as a gay human. A gay alien, even a Vulcan, Romulan, Klingon, or member of any other species canonically known to have two distinct sexes analogous to human sexes, also isn't the same as a gay human. Cf the Whoopi quote.

No it isn't, when a race is structured so one can only have sex one way there is no choice. A member of a race of hermaphrodites would not understand a gay human, (S)he would wonder why if there were two sexes, someone would choose to use only one. Hermaphrodite to hermaphrodite marriages are the only possibility for them.

Hermaphrodite species probably wouldn't have as many social complications as humans do either, so they would have trouble understanding why humans should get so worked up by these things.

 

[T'Girl]

A member of a race of hermaphrodites isn't the same as a gay human.

The antagonist species in Robert Heinlein's Number of the Beast was a hermaphrodite one, but they (iirc) alternated between functional male and female genders through the course of their lives, they weren't both at the same time, even though they alway possessed bothed genitalia. So they could be gay, if two (currently) same sex individuals became involved with each other.

I wonder how gay would manifest itself with a species in which one of it's genders was basically none? A drone (not Borg) gender with no obvious genitals, because they didn't reproduce, although their species did with other members who did possess genders.

 

[Maurice]

What the HELL does that have to do with the topic I was referring to: a show's portrayal of gay characters?

The show doesn't portray them much at all, but there is one character that is a member of a race of Hermaphrodites in the New Frontier series, (s)he is a member of the crew of the USS Excalibur captained by McKenzie Calhoun.

Again, your replies appear unconnected to do with what I was discussing: which was addressing if a Star Trek show should portray "gay" characters, and why some people can't seem to get their heads around the idea that it doesn't need to be an issue any more than Uhura's race. The fact that they'd be there is the only message you need.

And what point are you making with this statement?

Various other novels portray homosexual characters, but they are not as interesting as a race of hermaphrodites.

Change "homo" to "hetero" and see what it's implying.

 

[Mars]

What the HELL does that have to do with the topic I was referring to: a show's portrayal of gay characters?

The show doesn't portray them much at all, but there is one character that is a member of a race of Hermaphrodites in the New Frontier series, (s)he is a member of the crew of the USS Excalibur captained by McKenzie Calhoun.

Again, your replies appear unconnected to do with what I was discussing: which was addressing if a Star Trek show should portray "gay" characters, and why some people can't seem to get their heads around the idea that it doesn't need to be an issue any more than Uhura's race. The fact that they'd be there is the only message you need.

And what point are you making with this statement?

Various other novels portray homosexual characters, but they are not as interesting as a race of hermaphrodites.

Change "homo" to "hetero" and see what it's implying.

You want to check the box for homosexual, fine, what's next do you suppose? Its not really science fiction and it doesn't add to the plot, most viewers would tolerate it out of politeness, because the writer wanted to include a homosexual in the 24th century, no one wants to be called a homophobe after all.