Sasha Roiz as Sam Adama from Caprica.  Photo from the Battlestar Wiki

I've noticed a trend recently in television which seems remarkable to me.  It's a small trend, and one that's been developing for several years, but in recent years it's become more pronounced.

It's been a long time since alternative lifestyles were verboten on television.  As early as the 70's, TV programs started to talk about gays, for example, and introduce gay characters.  But for much of that time, gay characters or gay issues in any show had to have a reason to be there.  If a gay character was introduced, it was simply assumed that at some point that character would face a "gay issue" that the writer's could explore through that character.

In more recent times, however, there seems to be a sea change in the way alternative lifestyles are depicted.  Whereas in the past, any character with an alternative lifestyle (homosexual, poly, swinger, etc) was there for a specific reason, we are now starting to see shows where characters with alternative lifestyles are presented as simply characters in the show.

Many of the examples I've seen come from science fiction.  This isn't surprising, perhaps, given that SF is often ahead of the curve in examining alternative social reality.  Going back as far as the 50's and 60's, writers like Robert Heinlein clearly examined alternative lifestyles in ways that went well beyond what people in general society were willing to do.  But even then, when Heinlein wrote about alternative lifestyles (think Stranger in a Strange Land), he did so with a clear point ... to examine the impact of those lifestyles on the people and societies they were in.

This new trend is substantially different.  Take Camille Wray (played admirably by Ming-Na) from the latest Stargate series, Stargate: Universe.  Her character is clearly lesbian ... the story of her going home using the communication crystals was a wonderfully tender and beautiful love story with her lesbian lover.  Yet, her gayness is never an issue on the show.  To date, she has faced no gay issues, has expressed no interest in gay rights, has had no issues with fellow crew members about being gay.  Her gayness, while being a central part of her character, is just as incidental to the story arc of Universe as the "straightness" of the other characters.

Another show that highlights this even more clearly, perhaps, is Caprica, the "pre-quel" to Battlestar Gallactica.  In Caprica, we see a number of alternative lifestyles on display.  Sister Clarice clearly lives in a polyamorous marriage of several people.  Sam Adama (Sasha Roiz) is an openly gay character who also happens to be one of the toughest bad-asses on the show.  Again, in both these cases, their alternative lifestyles are integral parts of their characters, but they don't have a "reason" ... they both play a key role in the plotlines of the show, but their alternative lifestyles aren't part of that role.

Sam Adama provides, perhaps, the most striking example of the sea change I alluded to above.  Not only is Sam a gay man who is openly tender with his male partner, but he is also a gangster who is an enforcer for his lawyer brother (and father of Battlestar Gallactica's Commander Bill Adama).  With Sam Adama, they have clearly broken the stereotypes of gay characters.  Not only is there no "reason" for Sam Adama to be gay, there is every reason for him to be explicitly straight (by way of comparison, can anyone imagine a gay character in the Sopranos being treated as just one of the boys the way Adama is?).  Allowing the tough guy gangster to be written as a gay man is remarkable enough, but when that gay man also faces no gay issues, it truly marks a change in the way TV portrays stereotypes.

I have nothing against "issues TV" that uses a gay character to highlight an important social issue ... that isn't the point of this post.  Instead, the point is to highlight that, until recently, that is the ONLY example of alternative lifestyles we ever saw on TV ... if you were going to talk about alternative lifestyles, you pretty much had to have a relevant and "serious" social issue to discuss in relation to that alternative lifestyle.  While straight, monogamous characters could be straight and monogamous without their orientation playing a direct role in the plot, that was never true for the gay character, the poly character, or the swinger.

With character's like Sam Adama, Sister Clarice, and Camille Wray, we may well be entering a new era of TV where a gay character can be gay without his or her gayness being an integral part of the plot.   I, for one, would love to see the day when the orientation of gay, poly swinger characters was just as immaterial to the plot as the orientation of the straight, monogamous characters that surround them.  That really would mark a sea-change in attitudes, and I think with characters like Sam Adama out there, we may well be taking the first, small steps toward that goal.