Who Are the Gay Copules in Modern Family

'Modernistic Family' and Gay Spousal relationship: It's Complicated

ABC

In a slightly depressing column on sexual activity and tv earlier this week, Washington Postal service Telly critic Tom Shales singled out Modern Family for its portrayal of gay characters. The evidence, he said, "depicts a gay-male wedlock in which both partners are refreshingly dimensional, believable human beings...they're non flawed in the giddy, stereotypical means that in one case dominated such portrayals." This statement highlights both how far Modern Family has come—and how far it still has to get when information technology comes to gay couples in relationships.

Eric Stonestreet—the actor who plays Cam, 1 half of the couple Shales praises in his column—told me he's proud that the show treats his graphic symbol'southward family like an equal corner of the three families who make up Mod Family'southward supporting triangle. He appreciates that the series doesn't need to dwell obsessively on the fact that the show portrays a loving, good for you, stable family unit headed by 2 gay parents. But at that place are limits to that normalization.

While the parents in the other two families regularly impact, kiss, and demonstrate clear, ongoing sexual lives, Modern Family'south creators made a large bargain over creating a storyline to explicate why Mitch and Cam are rarely seen touching, much less flirting, kissing, or displaying other obvious signs of sexual attraction. And in that storyline, the prove whiffed. Rather than having Mitch overcome his fear of public displays of affection, the episode shoehorned in a sly kiss so quick that many viewers missed it. Information technology'due south alright for the audience to know that gay couples buss. But evidently, the adding is that, we're just too jumpy to actually lookout a very realistic heart-anile and one-half-overweight gay couple share fifty-fifty a relatively chaste smooch on center-screen.

And the show walks an interesting line on questions of gay identity and sometimes misses out on opportunities to confront homophobia. In last week's episode, "Convulsion," Cam and Mitch took shelter under the table dressed in costumes for an Oscar Wilde-themed brunch. Mitch insisted the couple couldn't die in the quake because "if they find us in these outfits information technology's going to be very bad for the gays." It was a cocky-aware niggling line near the gay community's ain internal debates about perception and reputation. Simply it acquired a sour notation later in the prove when Nathan Lane showed up to portray an overdramatically swishy stereotype of the kind Shales commended Modern Family for avoiding.

It wasn't the first fourth dimension Modernistic Family has mocked one kind of gay performance to showcase the normality of a gay family. In a first-season episode, the characters assumed a friend of Jay, the family patriarch, was gay because of his mannerisms. Rather than assuredly debunking their assumptions, the testify let hang the implication that the man was simply deluding himself.

And in an episode before this season, a nasty fight between Mitch's nieces Haley Dunphy and Alex Dunphy reached a touchy annotation when Haley suggested that Alex was a lesbian. Haley'southward mother chastises her for using sexual orientation as a slur, but how much more than interesting would the scene have been if it had occurred in forepart of Cam and Mitch? At that place's no sign that Haley doesn't love her uncles and her adopted cousin. Her slip into a coincidental, homophobic teenage mindset isn't shocking. It'due south an case of the kinds of compromises directly Americans make effectually sexual orientation all the time, loving family or friends without fully committing to their struggles for legal and societal equality.

The show made a joke of Mitch's response to perceived homophobia in the earliest minutes of the series' premiere episode. But if he'd been in the room when Haley had her skid, the scene could take validated his fears of homophobia—and challenged his extended family—by revealing the gap between how much the Duphys dearest Mitch, Cam and Lily, and how much they're nevertheless influenced past larger societal views of gay people.

Almost chiefly, there's a factual error in Shales' assessment of Mitch and Cam'southward relationship: they aren't actually married, something Stonestreet confirmed for me. This is really more glaring than the lame kiss or the bungled identity issues—especially since the prove is set in and effectually Los Angeles, where Mitch and Cam could accept gotten legally married at some signal. Their need for the legal protections and benefits of spousal relationship may not exist particularly urgent as long as the evidence sticks to generally lite-hearted topics (somehow, I don't run into Modernistic Family against issues similar hospital visitation rights). Only given that the couple is raising a daughter, the legal land of their relationship has implications for her well-beingness and future. As of 2005, more than 270,000 American children were being raised by aforementioned-sex couples. It'southward not a particularly radical thing to show a gay couple raising a child together anymore. But at a time when equal union rights are a state-by-land battlefield, Modern Family unit might because making Cam, Mitch, and Lily legally, as well equally socially, equal with the other families on the testify.

There's no question that Modern Family'south gay family is deft, well-sketched, funny and sweetness. Mitch, Cam, and their daughter Lily are a triumph for good television writing, likewise every bit for equality. But the truth is, for reasons of law and of prejudice, their family is different. If Modern Family'due south to truly cover parenting and married relationships in all their forms, the evidence has to admit the challenges that come with those differences, forth with the joys.

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Source: https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2010/10/modern-family-and-gay-marriage-its-complicated/64397/