Out, Loud, and on the Main Screen: Four Years of Gay TV That Changed the Conversation
With the new Canadian series, Heated Rivalry, airing on HBO, gay entertainment has been changed. Heated Rivalry is as close to soft porn as it can get—and why? There is nudity, but no dick. There are some amazing butts (a clear invitation to do squats at the gym), lean, muscular bodies—and most importantly, some passionate sex. There is deep kissing, stroking, fucking, frottage, and hand jobs (with spit). There is a story—two very successful hockey players on opposing teams strike up a sexual encounter that moves through time. One is Russian, one is Canadian, both are very sexy. It is to be clear, a story about sexual obsession. They rarely have conversations, an if episode four is any indication, this is a good thing. They have affection for one another, but their story is really one of lust. Episode four was a turning point in their relationship and in the series: during their longest conversation, over melted tuna sandwiches, the subject of girls comes up. Illya, the Russian tells the Canadian, Shane, that he likes girls, while adding at the last moment, “I like girls, but I also like you.” Shane replies with, “Lucky me.” It’s a nasty, uncomfortable exchange that takes us to Shane taking interest in a celebrity, Rose, in a nighclub. Needless to say, both Illya and Shane end up in the same night club and in a compelling, quick cut montage with “All the Things She Said” by t.A.T.u. as a soundtrack, we see Shane go home with Rose, and Illya mastubate in a a shower.
This may be, eventually a love story. For now, its ‘s sex, games, denial, and of course, lust.
But let’s take a step backward and look at how we got here:
In the last four years, gay television hasn’t just found its footing—it’s claimed its space. What was once relegated to subplots or coded characters has evolved into full-bodied storytelling, led by queer creators, driven by young audiences, and shaped by a post-streaming world where identity is no longer niche content but cultural currency.
From tender coming‑of‑age dramas to glossy reality TV and fearless comedies, the early 2020s marked a turning point. These shows didn’t ask for permission. They assumed the spotlight.
2021: The Year Queer Joy Went Global
If one series defined a shift, it was It’s a Sin. Russell T Davies’ searing portrait of the AIDS crisis didn’t just revisit history—it reclaimed it. Airing to massive audiences in the UK and internationally, the show proved that gay stories could be both devastating and essential, resonating far beyond the LGBTQ+ community. The show had its share of lusty sex, as it 1981, pre-AIDS.
At the same time, Young Royals quietly emerged from Sweden, delivering a soft‑spoken but emotionally potent exploration of queer love under the weight of monarchy and tradition. Its global success signaled something important: subtitles were no barrier when the story felt real.
This show was the beginning of the “teen romance” where characters did not appear to have dicks. There was ample kissing, cuddling and touching, not until episode three, do we see what can rightly be called, lust. And it was worth the wait.
2022: Heartbreak, Heartstopper, and the Power of Tenderness
Then came Heartstopper—and everything softened.
Alice Oseman’s Netflix adaptation rejected trauma as the default narrative. Instead, it offered sweetness, anxiety, first love, and the radical idea that being gay doesn’t have to hurt to matter. For younger viewers especially, it became a cultural touchstone, flooding social media with fan art, tears, and relief.
Meanwhile, Euphoria continued to polarize and provoke, with Hunter Schafer’s Jules remaining one of television’s most complex queer characters—messy, beautiful, and unapologetically flawed. If Heartstopper represented safety, Euphoriaembodied chaos, together capturing the spectrum of queer adolescence.
2023: Reality TV Comes Out (Again)
Reality television also had its moment. Shows like RuPaul’s Drag Race—now a global franchise—continued to dominate, but newer series such as The Ultimatum: Queer Love pushed representation into unscripted territory rarely afforded to LGBTQ+ couples.
This wasn’t novelty casting. These were fully queer ensembles navigating love, jealousy, and commitment on their own terms. The effect? Normalization without dilution—queer stories told without translation.
Scripted television followed suit. Fellow Travelers delivered prestige drama with teeth, tracing a decades‑long gay romance against the backdrop of American political repression. It was adult, unapologetic, and emotionally brutal—proof that gay narratives could anchor serious historical storytelling.
2024–2025: Where We Are Now
By the mid‑2020s, something remarkable had happened: gay TV no longer felt like a genre. It was simply television.
Queer characters appeared across crime dramas, teen series, rom‑coms, and workplace comedies—often without fanfare. Shows like Heartstopper matured alongside their audience, while international series continued to shape the conversation from outside Hollywood’s orbit.
For Southern California—long a laboratory for pop culture—this era reflects a broader shift. The stories coming out of writers’ rooms now mirror the diversity seen on Sunset Boulevard, in Silver Lake cafés, and along the Venice Boardwalk: queer lives that are complicated, joyful, political, romantic, and unfinished.
The Takeaway
What the last four years have shown isn’t just progress—it’s permanence. Gay television is no longer fighting to be seen. It’s shaping taste, driving global fandoms, and redefining whose stories get to feel universal.
And perhaps that’s the quiet victory: not that queer characters are everywhere, but that their presence finally feels inevitable.
“Get over yourself.”
You are completely delusional. There is no point in talking to someone so messed up and narrow-minded. Clearly, you are so invested in ‘gay culture’ (your version of it) that you don’t even know what the real world looks like anymore.
You keep saying I’m avoiding gay culture but don’t define what it is, even though I’ve already said I don’t avoid it, just the club culture. As I mentioned, this magazine has it wrong, but no more wrong than you.” —JUSTME, perpetual commentator
JustMe is probably like you and me. Occasionally, he feels the need to comment on a post found on a popular gay blog. Initially, comments address the story at hand, and then rather quickly dissolve into a tirade of personal attacks. Like a boxer, the writer retreats to his corner for a time, reads the follow-up comments, and then returns with a right uppercut to the jaw—wham! Take that, you ignoramus. And it can go on and on…
There was a time, years ago, when trees were turned into paper, and paper made magazines. During those times, people would write a “letter to the editor.” A gay magazine might receive, on a good month, a hundred letters. Handwritten or typed, these letters expressed some feelings about a story in a recent issue, and they would, after a little help from an editor, be published.
INTER(RE)ACTIVE Then came the Internet, and everything changed. Magazines essentially went the way of the dinosaur, saving hundreds of trees. Born in this era was something with the unpleasant name of a blog—a contraction of the words “web log.” These were journals, diaries, or notes on one’s existence, favoring images and texts that allowed readers into the mind of the writer. A handsome 36-year-old named Andy Towle wrote one such blog, Towleroad, which emerged in 2003. It began like most blogs, as a diary of Andy’s life, featuring short videos (shot by Andy) and observations on his life. For example, in November 2003, Mr. Towle discussed his first encounter with the drink Absinthe, even giving directions on how to prepare it. Another entry shows Mr. Towle being kissed by a rather attractive young man. It was personal. For the record, Andy became a millionaire after selling the website in 2021.
In 2005, David Hauslaib started Queerty. A market watch report from 2005 tells us: Queerty is published by 21-year-old David Hauslaib. He also owns Jossip.com, self-described as a “big bag of rumors” about celebrities and show business in New York. A flurry of gay and lesbian blogs soon followed. For the casual reader, information was now available and packaged in short Entertainment Weekly bites that invited conversation with the reader—something magazines didn’t really do. What few suspected about this phenomenon was that everyone wanted in on the act. A blog took work, a lot of work: daily scouring of the news and Internet for tiny morsels of gay-related information. Once presented, a comments column would allow readers to voice their opinions. And this is where the trouble started. A blogger could be held responsible for their words—they were the author of the blog, that was a given. Comments, on the other hand, were anonymous, shielded by secrecy, and apparently, everyone had something to say. It wasn’t just gay blogs—political blogs, in particular, would begin with a responsible topic only to conclude in a cavalcade of bitch fights, no one really listening, just opining. Somehow, in our delusional minds, we must have thought gay men might be nicer—after all, we were all in this fight for freedom and equality together, holding hands at vigils and lighting our united candles together.
This is not to say that all intelligent conversation has been lost—it hasn’t; it’s just hard to discern. And unfortunately, people get personal. JustMe and LittleKiwi on Towleroad managed to exchange over forty comments on one story alone, usually about each other. And this was a fairly innocuous story about a new gay magazine called HelloMr.
In retrospect, magazines required effort—one had to actually lick a stamp and pray to get their opinion published. Now, it’s all clicks and hiding, and one can be as nasty as words will allow.
And we wouldn’t change a thing. The fact is, this is who we are. We are exceptionally critical as a cultural group. We sharpen our tongues on a wide variety of subjects—sociological, political, sexual. Gay blogs and the Internet have revealed much. Never before has there been a time in history when communication was so vast and expedient. We know more about the mind of a gay man or woman than ever before, not only through the thoughtful, often entertaining world of gay bloggers but also their audience. Just as we know more about the intimacies of the sexual lives of people as revealed in cam websites such as Cam4 and Chaturbate. But we should be cautioned: just as an appearance on one of those websites will reveal us, so too will our comments on gay blogs.”
If you are not familiar with AI, it’s a platform for creating immersive experiences where the artwork responds to the viewer’s presence or actions. These interactive pieces often blur the lines between the creator, the audience, and the art itself. In other words, it is where a creator tells a computer what the image should look like, and the computer, within seconds fires off a few versions and asks if there are any changes.
AI can generate images, including those with adult or erotic content, but such uses are typically restricted or prohibited by most AI platforms. As always, there are ways around that.
So, what does it all mean? If you’re an illustrator, this will affect you—badly—it can create images of quality, quickly and, no one seems to know where they come from. But we had to ask: AI-generated images are created by a type of machine learning model known as a generative model, specifically a Generative Adversarial Network (GAN), Variational Autoencoder (VAE), or Transformer-based models like DALL-E. These models are trained on vast datasets of images and text, learning to generate new images that align with textual descriptions or other inputs.
Confessions of a Gay Art Director
Over the decades I spent a lot of time art-directing gay magazines, such as The Advocate, Genre, Hero, In Magazine, and Out. As one can imagine there are stories to be told and the time has come to tell them. But first, just what is a magazine art director? A magazine AD was the person who put the art and words together to create a style for the magazine that became its brand. It was the “look” of the publication and to do that AD’s would hire photographers and illustrators to complete the writing of the story.
A funny thing about time is how it often distorts the truth. Memories are made solely in the mind, of one person, and other people can see things differently. And often do. But these are my recollections—this is how I remember it.
Let’s start with Genre magazine: Genre was a prominent gay men’s magazine that operated primarily during the 1990s and early 2000s. Founded in 1991 by John Liggins and Michael Turner, it was initially conceived as a lifestyle publication aimed at affluent, style-conscious gay men. Genre was positioned to appeal to a broader, more mainstream audience within the LGBTQ+ community, differentiating itself from other magazines that focused more on adult content or niche audiences. It later brought in Richard Settles as publisher and New York-based co-owner and associate publisher Doug Shingleton.
I was there in 2001, though I had done a few freelance jobs on Genre, working out of Richard Settles’s bathroom. But in 2001, we literally walked the old staff out and brought in Andy Towle as Editor-in-Chief, Michael Davis as Creative Director and I remained as Art Director.
The publisher, Richard Settles, was looking to sell the magazine, and his contributions became less and less with time. The trilogy of Towle, Davis, and Dunbar was a powerhouse, for a time.
About the third issue, as we worked into the evening, a sudden screaming and the sound of papers and books flying came from Andy’s office. He was not happy. He had essentially cleared his desk. In the room was Michael Davis. They had a fight. It was a few weeks later when Richard Settles called Davis into his office and told him he was no longer employed.
Michael Davis is not one to take things lying down so in a week or two he was back as art director at competitor magazine, Instinct.
The cause of that disruption in the Genre office has been a matter of speculation for decades.
Some twenty years later, I asked Michael Davis and he said, “Andy was upset that I brought up the fact that every time we went somewhere, he expected me to pay.” Around the same time, I asked Andy Towle—Andy, to this day has never revealed what happened. He does not speak to Michael Davis.
Richard Settles, looking to retire stopped coming into the office. It was just Andy and I. So, for about a year it was Andy and I creating the magazine. We had editors, none in the office but that occasionally stopped by, but each issue was planned and executed by the two of us.
First meeting Andy Towle—we were at the Abbey, it was late afternoon, and if you are facing West, the sun illuminates a person’s eyes. We were in the middle of the bar, and Andy was looking West and I was talking to him. Andy is a very attractive man. He went to Vassar University, he was smart, short, and easy to look at. I liked him. I liked working with him. I don’t think we ever had a harsh word. We went on an Atlantis Cruise together. We may have liked the same person on that trip, though I always thought Andy could get anyone he wanted and usually did.
We worked on 12 issues. The Sex issue was fun—we did ask author Christopher Rice to join us in a meeting, but it really came back to Andy and I asking questions we had about sex.
In time, the stirring of a sale of the magazine cut short our journey. In 2004, Genre magazine was sold to Window Media, a media company that focused on LGBTQ+ publications. Window Media also owned other LGBTQ+ media outlets such as the Washington Blade and Southern Voice. The acquisition was part of Window Media‘s strategy to consolidate gay and lesbian media under one company to enhance their market reach.
An acquisition and changing of staff is never easy. Andy and I were asked to stay for a few weeks to help transition the new staff. It was terrible. We were treated badly. Andy went over to another gay magazine and I went to Out magazine as an interim Art Director. To follow Andy Towle with editor-in-chief Brendon Lemon was a huge disappointment.
The magazine changed hands many times.
In and Out
After a disastrous year at The Advocate, it was time to get local—WeHo local, in the form of what is commonly called a rag: IN magazine. It was published by Frontiers magazine, Southern California’s oldest and largest lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) publication. Founded in 1981, Frontiers was freely distributed at gay bars, clubs, and businesses throughout Southern California. The biweekly publication covered local, national, and international LGBT news, entertainment, HIV/AIDS topics, and other important issues. It also included its popular escort listings section, Frontiers4Men. As of February 2014, it had a staff of 19 and claimed a readership of 270,000. Those were the good old days.
IN magazine, however, was another story entirely.
Our offices were down the street from Frontiers. We had little to do with them other than the occasional visit to the publisher, Bob Craig. While he was the publisher, the actual founders and owners of IN were David Stern and Mark Hundahl.
IN was what you might call a “start-up.” It didn’t exist as a magazine—only as an idea. Its creation fell to me. I didn’t trust myself to handle both editor and creative director roles, so I set out to find an editor.
JV Mauley was one of the funniest people I’ve ever met. His wit was quick and rampant—he was like a Robin Williams character: energetic, fun, and engaging. He had created a drag persona, Shelvelva Kennedy. He was funny… until he wasn’t.
There’s a mythology that grows around people and publications—and IN has its myths. For the record, this is a recollection based on facts.
IN magazine was born from revenge. David Stern had been fired from another gay publication, The Edge, and this magazine was his sweet, simple payback. Social causes may have mattered later, but at the start, we were fully intent on going up against the competition—and winning.
JV was a good editor. And an alcoholic. I had to take him across the street to the gay bar, Gold Coast, and get him plastered just to get his creative juices flowing. They did flow—sometimes like a river, sometimes like a fire hose.
At one point, the Frontiers editors took notice of our little rag. I came up with a cover story called “State of the Union,” about gay relationships. My friend John Skalicky did the portraits; I had worked with him on previous publications.
I worked very hard on this magazine, nights and weekends, often alone. So it was a complete shock when, one afternoon, I was called into Bob Craig’s office and told they could no longer employ me. I was asked to pack my things and leave. I returned to the office and there sat JV, whose only words were, “I didn’t know.”
The peculiar thing about being fired is that it messes with memory. The moment is filled with confusion and hurt—not logic or comprehension.
IN magazine was meant from the start to be different than Frontiers. While Frontiers leaned political, IN Los Angeles adopted a lifestyle-oriented approach, akin to People magazine, focusing on celebrity profiles, entertainment, and cultural features.
After my departure, the magazine hired an art director down the hall who did White Party flyers. The magazine quickly reinvented itself as a publication serving the gay party crowd.
Years later, David Stern and I exchanged emails and letters. In one conversation and in a letter, he explained: “The reason you were let go is that Bob Craig was embezzling money and they had run out of money to pay you.” Indeed, I was probably asking for more as an art director, having worked in New York City on many Condé Nast publications and other national magazines.
JV, never contacted me. The story goes that he ws using Crystal Myth and would disappear for days. He too finally lost his job and moved to Iowa to work for Target stores.