LGBT: Youth In Television - Tweens, Teens & More!

“Marco was my idol,” said Adamo Ruggiero, who portrayed Marco and is also gay. “He was coming out faster than I was. At the beginning, I was jealous of him, because he was doing it so quickly. Then I realized, I had the best gay manual ever.”

Television’s crucial role in providing such positive images for youth who are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender (LGBT) was the focus of a compelling evening featuring Ruggiero and numerous other participants, presented by the Television Academy’s diversity committee.

Held June 11 at the Leonard H. Goldenson Theatre in North Hollywood, “LGBT: Youth in Television – Tweens, Teens & More!” was the committee’s second annual LGBT event, inspired by the increase in violence toward LGBT young people, by others’ hands and their own.

Indeed, 90 per cent of LGBT students report being harassed at school; young people who are LGBT are twice as likely as their peers to smoke, drink or abuse drugs, and four times as likely to commit suicide.

Program host Kathy Griffin, a two-time primetime Emmy Award winner for her Bravo series My Life on the D-List and an ardent youth and gay rights supporter, injected plenty of hilarity into her discussions with panelists, while never losing sight of the night’s serious mission.

First up: Ruggiero and Sarah Lindman, general manager of The N and Teen Nick. Degrassi helped educate his parents – “Really good people who had absolutely no idea about gay people” – Ruggiero noted.

“This show – this is what my friends were going through.” And, said Lindman, after attending an event for the Trevor Project, which operates a suicide and crisis prevention hotline for gay and questioning youth, “several kids came up to me, crying. Degrassi shows positive images.”

The ABC Family series Greek, set in the world of college fraternities and sororities, featured a student questioning her sexuality, played by Dilshad Vadsaria, and one who is gay, played by Paul James.

Vadsaria, whose Rebecca Logan ultimately turned out to be heterosexual, said that some of her real-life friends were “creeped out” at scenes where the actress, who is straight, kissed another girl. “I didn’t hear back from them for a few weeks. This storyline is important. I’d hate to be in a situation where I had no one to turn to,” she asserted.

Growing up gay in a small town, James said he had no real-life role models, but found them on Melrose Place. As for the show’s home, creator Patrick Sean Smith said that ABC Family “has been amazing. I’ve never had a problem.”

Next in the spotlight: the “Transitions” episode of NBC’s Law & Order: SVU, about a young teenage boy taking hormones to become a girl. Writer Ken Storer said he had read 2,000 pages of research on the subject of transgender teens; episode guest star Daniela Sea, a bisexual actress who had played transgender woman-to-man Moira/Max on Showtime’s The L Word, said that when she was offered the role of the teen’s older friend.

“I was skeptical, but once I read it, it was so good," Sea said. "It did a better job on this issue than even my show ever did.” Reaction was primarily positive; Storer said he knew personally of one viewer in rural Vermont who’d burst out crying and then began attending a support group.

Featured recently on the Oxygen reality show The Janice Dickinson Modeling Agency, model Martin Ritchie is deaf and gay. “Both those words were oppressing me [sometimes],” he said through an interpreter, “but they made me resilient. It was easier to come out [at age 15] – I’m already part of a minority group, so there was no point in hiding it.”

Dickinson executive producer Stuart Krasnow noted that “the gay storyline got buried by the deaf storyline.” Said Ritchie, who received mail from deaf fans as far away as India and Australia: “I was born that way for both.”

The last show of the evening was perhaps the most emotional: Prayers for Bobby, a Lifetime movie based on the Leroy Aarons book of the same name, the true story of Mary Griffith, a conservative Christian whose refusal to accept her son’s homosexuality led to his suicide and her eventual understanding and activism.

It took twelve years to get the film produced, said executive producer Daniel Sladek, calling it “a hot potato” because of the subject matter. Screenwriter Katie Ford added that gay network executives were among those who stood in the way. Ryan Kelley, the heterosexual actor who portrayed Bobby, said that kids approached him after the film aired to tell him, “Now my parents know what I go through.”

Scott Bailey, who played Bobby’s boyfriend, exemplified the purpose of this evening when he described others’ reaction to the film. “I got lots of questions,” said the heterosexual performer. “‘Are you afraid to play gay?’ I said, Why? This is the most important role I’ve ever played."

"It changed the way I think, and my family thinks," he continued. "I hadn’t had a lot of experience with the gay community till I moved to Los Angeles. [After] they watched this film, my relatives called and said, ‘Now we get it. Thank you for changing our experience.’

Vadsaria, whose Rebecca Logan ultimately turned out to be heterosexual, said that some of her real-life friends were “creeped out” at scenes where the actress, who is straight, kissed another girl. “I didn’t hear back from them for a few weeks. This storyline is important. I’d hate to be in a situation where I had no one to turn to,” she asserted.

Growing up gay in a small town, James said he had no real-life role models, but found them on Melrose Place. As for the show’s home, creator Patrick Sean Smith said that ABC Family “has been amazing. I’ve never had a problem.”

Next in the spotlight: the “Transitions” episode of NBC’s Law & Order: SVU, about a young teenage boy taking hormones to become a girl. Writer Ken Storer said he had read 2,000 pages of research on the subject of transgender teens; episode guest star Daniela Sea, a bisexual actress who had played transgender woman-to-man Moira/Max on Showtime’s The L Word, said that when she was offered the role of the teen’s older friend.

“I was skeptical, but once I read it, it was so good," Sea said. "It did a better job on this issue than even my show ever did.” Reaction was primarily positive; Storer said he knew personally of one viewer in rural Vermont who’d burst out crying and then began attending a support group.

Featured recently on the Oxygen reality show The Janice Dickinson Modeling Agency, model Martin Ritchie is deaf and gay. “Both those words were oppressing me [sometimes],” he said through an interpreter, “but they made me resilient. It was easier to come out [at age 15] – I’m already part of a minority group, so there was no point in hiding it.”

Dickinson executive producer Stuart Krasnow noted that “the gay storyline got buried by the deaf storyline.” Said Ritchie, who received mail from deaf fans as far away as India and Australia: “I was born that way for both.”

The last show of the evening was perhaps the most emotional: Prayers for Bobby, a Lifetime movie based on the Leroy Aarons book of the same name, the true story of Mary Griffith, a conservative Christian whose refusal to accept her son’s homosexuality led to his suicide and her eventual understanding and activism.

It took twelve years to get the film produced, said executive producer Daniel Sladek, calling it “a hot potato” because of the subject matter. Screenwriter Katie Ford added that gay network executives were among those who stood in the way. Ryan Kelley, the heterosexual actor who portrayed Bobby, said that kids approached him after the film aired to tell him, “Now my parents know what I go through.”

Scott Bailey, who played Bobby’s boyfriend, exemplified the purpose of this evening when he described others’ reaction to the film. “I got lots of questions,” said the heterosexual performer. “‘Are you afraid to play gay?’ I said, Why? This is the most important role I’ve ever played."

"It changed the way I think, and my family thinks," he continued. "I hadn’t had a lot of experience with the gay community till I moved to Los Angeles. [After] they watched this film, my relatives called and said, ‘Now we get it. Thank you for changing our experience.’

•

Robert Bradley Sears, executive director of the Charles R. Williams Institute on Sexual Orientation Law and Public Policy at the UCLA School of Law, presented the evening’s opening remarks. Stephen Tropiano, author of The Prime Time Closet: A History of Gays and Lesbians on Television, gave a brief overview of TV’s depiction of homosexuality.

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