Here's a lovely article about the people who risked their careers to put a gay couple on Barney Miller back in the 1970s. (With excellent quotes from @stevencapsuto.bsky.social & a link to my video on the topic.) Gift link: www.nytimes.com/2025/11/04/a...

Woohoo! I'm quoted in today's NY Times piece about the 50th anniversary of the gay couple on the 1970s-80s sitcom BARNEY MILLER: Darryl and Marty. #gay #queer #LGBTQ #sitcom

Video: 1983 - The first ongoing gay role on a US daytime soap opera: psychologist Lynn Carson (Donna Pescow) on ALL MY CHILDREN. www.youtube.com/watch?v=rzFb... #AllMyChildren #SoapOpera #LGBTQ #lesbian #gay #queer

Could people please stop using the word "divisive" as a euphemism for "recycled KKK rhetoric?" It is such a moral abdication.

In the days after Charlie Kirk's death, half the internet sounds like that awful guy at the office who keeps going up to women coworkers and saying, "What are you talking about? Bob's a great guy! *I've* never heard him harass anyone!" #CreepyAssholes

(Watches British TV shows on PBS.) So... Is advanced criminology actually taught in Christian seminaries in the UK? Or is solving murders just something that all British clergy do as a hobby?

Today, I'm at the Yiddish Book Center in Massachusetts for the annual Yidstock music festival. This is their Yiddish typewriter collection, on display in the book room, where the public can peruse or buy many of the thousands of vintage volumes in Yiddish that the center has rescued. #Yiddish

Video: TODAY IN QUEER TV HISTORY 1) "Straight Man in a Gay World" on Morgan Spurlock's "30 Days" (2005) 2) Founders of the Parents of Gays organization (now PFLAG) on NBC's "Today" show (1978) #gay #queer #lgbtq

Video: TODAY IN QUEER TV HISTORY 1. The founder of Parents of Gays (now PFLAG), Jeanne Manford, on "The Pat Collins Show," July 5, 1974 2. "Hyde in Hollywood' on PBS's "American Playhouse," July 5, 1991 www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkCS... #gay #queer #LGBTQ

If you're rounding up people who "look Hispanic," what you really mean is they look like indigenous peoples of the Americas. This is white leaders ordering the roundup and imprisonment of indigenous Americans, to punish them for being on the wrong side of lines that white people drew on the ground.

❤️🤍💙

All I can say about US Republicans is they better hope the Christians are wrong and that there's no such things as hell. 🔥 😠

This week, I'm digitizing audio interviews I did in the 90s with people who'd been involved in gay rights activism in the 1950s to mid-1970s, and with TV producers and writers behind early US TV depictions of queer people. I plan to post some of them online (for tapes where I have permission). 😊

Marriage equality seems to be the only issue Andrew Sullivan ever seriously cared about. In the 1990s, he kept urging us to abandon the pursuit of employment nondiscrimination and instead focus activism entirely on attaining marriage rights, which helps far fewer of us. I never had much use for him.

An addled president is shredding the Constitution to usher in white nationalism and fascism while destroying the economy and our health care, so if you’re going to write an alarmist op-ed because a mayoral candidate might open five (5) city-run grocery stores, you can kindly get bent.

Favorite typo seen today: "I need to attach an apostle to the translation of my birth certificate." (I think they meant "apostille.")

Socialism is what they called public power. Socialism is what they called social security.    Socialism is what they called the growth of free and independent labor organizations.   Socialism is their name for almost anything that helps all the people. —Harry Truman, 1952

It's 98 degrees in NYC today (36 Celsius). If this day were a person, it would have a healthy body temperature.

TODAY IN QUEER TV HISTORY Raquel Welch appeared on THE DICK CAVETT SHOW on 6/25/1970, talking about her starring role playing a trans woman in the notoriously awful film MYRA BRECKENRIDGE. Of course, there's video... #LGBTQ #trans #queer

On a potential client's contractor-management portal, the screen about minority-owned businesses asks whether I'm an LGBT-owned business, and if so, whether I'm self-reporting or if I'm certified as such by an official certifying agency. Certified how? Is a note from my partner good enough?

It seems Trump and Co. are trying to purge LGBTQ people from federal jobs, like in the 1950s. I'll be surprised if this doesn't end up with prison camps for queers. And as I'm being hauled away, some MAGA asshole will say to me "How can you be angry with me over a difference of political opinion?"

TODAY IN QUEER TV HISTORY - 2/24/1993 On the GRAMMY AWARDS, k.d. lang & Melissa Etheridge won, respectively, Best Pop Vocal Performance, Female & Best Rock Vocal Performance, Female. Both had recently come out publicly, at a time when out-and-proud celebrities were rare. #LGBTQ #gay #lesbian #queer

TODAY IN QUEER TV HISTORY - 2/24/1993 On the GRAMMY AWARDS, k.d. lang & Melissa Etheridge won, respectively, Best Pop Vocal Performance, Female & Best Rock Vocal Performance, Female. Both had recently come out publicly, at a time when out-and-proud celebrities were rare. #LGBTQ #gay #lesbian #queer

TODAY IN QUEER TV HISTORY - 2/23/1981 DYNASTY: In an early episode of the original 1980s version of this drama series, a coworker decides to "fix" Steven's attraction to men by taking him to a brothel so he can see what sex with a woman is like. (And oh, that 80s hair!) #LGBTQ #gay #queer #Dynasty

TODAY IN #QUEER TV HISTORY - 2/23/1999 An episode of BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER gave the first hint that Willow (Alyson Hannigan) might not be as straight as her friends assumed, when her "skanky" vampire alter-ego from a parallel universe showed up and seemed (as "good Willow" put it) "kinda #gay."

Something I wrote in Oct. 2013: "Just heard a GOP representative say 'We are perfectly willing to reopen the parts of the government that we agree with.' " The more things change, the more they stay the same. Voting for Republicans empowers this shit, even if you like the individual candidate.

A one-day #boycott of a company accomplishes nothing. A one-week boycott accomplishes nothing. To be effective, a boycott must last until the company changes its policies and practices. If that's forever then it's forever, but often, companies do come around and the boycott can end.

Went back to regular workouts about two weeks ago. Doing lots of cardio feels like it's going to work wonders for my mood, my blood pressure, and my sanity for however many years (or decades?) the current political situation continues.

Why has Mitch McConnell found his spine after years of callousness toward human suffering and disdain for the law? Because he's a very old Conservative Christian who's starting to think maybe he's earned an eternity of hellfire, and he hopes that play-acting at being a good person might save him.

If I ever go back to giving lectures about queer images on American TV, I think I'll start each talk with a dramatic reading of some of the homophobic and transphobic shit that people post in the comments on my YouTube channel. Jeez...

The American Medical Association has an active official YouTube channel and Facebook page, with some of the sorts of alerts we used to get from the federal government, though on a smaller scale. These fill at least some of the gaps. #health

I hear people saying that "The comparisons between Trump and 1930s fascists are no longer hyperbole." You know what? The comparisons were *never* hyperbole... as Holocaust survivors and Holocaust historians were already pointing out urgently in 2015-2016. Some of you just weren't paying attention.

TODAY IN QUEER TV HISTORY - 2/10/1989 The syndicated talk show GERALDO devoted an hour to men who'd left their wives for another man. Or, as the episode title put it: "When 'The Other Woman' is a Man." I need to dig out and digitize my VHS copy of this. 😀 #lgbtq #gay #bi #queer #TalkShows

TODAY IN QUEER TV HISTORY - 2/10/1989 On THE GOLDEN GIRLS' Valentine's Day episode, Blanche helps a young man work up the nerve to propose to his fiance. The "reveal" that his partner's a guy is treated as a bit of a punchline, but for 1980s TV, the vibe was pretty queer-friendly. #LGBTQ #queer

TODAY IN QUEER TV HISTORY - 2/10/1996 C-SPAN broadcast a huge right-wing rally in its entirety: a rabid homophobic hatefest for the so-called National Campaign to Protect Marriage. Every major 1996 Republican presidential candidate spoke there or sent a letter of support. #LGBTQ #queer #homophobia

TODAY IN QUEER TV HISTORY - 2/10/1977 PBS reran THE WAR WIDOW, possibly American TV's 1st love story between women. Pamela Bellwood plays an upper-class wife & mother in 1918 who discovers her sexuality while her husband is away at war. Eventually she leaves him for a woman. #LGBTQ #lesbian #queer

TODAY IN QUEER TV HISTORY - 2/9/1971 1st openly gay guest role on a US sitcom, on ALL IN THE FAMILY: Steve (Phil Carey), a drinking buddy of closed-minded Archie (Carroll O'Connor). The groundbreaking episode's point (radical for 1971) was that you can't always spot a #gay person. #LGBTQ #queer

I launched a YouTube channel four years ago: Mainstream TV portrayals of queer characters and issues (mostly 20th-century clips I collected while doing research for my book, though I'm slowly adding 21st-century clips to my database and channel). #LGBTQ #queer #gay #lesbian #bi #bisexual #trans

Top comment on the recent NYT story on DOGE’s young aides www.nytimes.com/shared/comme...

A really good thread...

TODAY IN QUEER TV HISTORY - 2/8/2019 ONE DAY AT A TIME: Netflix released Season 3 of this wonderful sitcom on today's date in 2019. In this clip, Elena and Syd have been trying to find a word to replace "girlfriend" now that Syd identifies as nonbinary. #LGBTQ #queer #enby #nonbinary

58 years ago today - 2/8/1967 A recording of gay activists Clark Polak and Barbara Gittings on the radio in Philadelphia, advocating for our rights at a time when we were officially criminals almost everywhere in the United States. #LGBTQ #gay #lesbian #queer

TODAY IN QUEER TV HISTORY - 2/8/2019 ANDI MACK: Queer-youth characters make some TV executives squeamish even today, so how cool it is that the Disney Channel (of all stations) casually included a gay kid, Cyrus, as a major regular role on a kids' dramedy series in the 2010s. #LGBTQ #queer #gay

These days, I keep thinking about a lyric from the musical "Stop the World—I Want to Get Off": "Anybody can be president of these great United States / And to prove it, almost anybody is."

[gestures at several streams of news today] we spent more than a decade convincing ourselves that people can say "provocative" things in public as sort of a game without it reflecting on or affecting who they are

TODAY IN QUEER TV HISTORY - 2/7/1991 L.A. LAW: The famous "lesbian kiss episode" actually involved a bi regular (played by Amanda Donohoe) kissing a straight regular (played by Michele Greene), who then freaked out about it, but who later briefly seemed bi-curious. #LGBTQ #queer #bisexual #lesbian

TODAY IN QUEER TV HISTORY - 2/7/1988 21 JUMP STREET: Officer Hanson (Johnny Depp) is sent to protect a gay teen with AIDS who's being bullied & threatened by people who don't want him at school. His dad's insistence on keeping his gayness in the closet makes things worse... #LGBTQ #queer #gay #HIV

TODAY IN QUEER TV HISTORY - 2/7/2018 QUEER EYE debuted on Netflix. This successful reboot of Bravo's old makeover reality series of the 2000s has a much more touchy-feely / self-help vibe than the original. Here's the Season 1 trailer: #LGBTQ #queer #gay #RealityTV #QueerEye

The US state with the highest number of active KKK groups in it (five as of circa 2020) is moving to favor straight white Christian men in hiring. "I'm shocked," said absolutely no one.