We were watching Sense8 with a friend recently. If you haven’t heard of Sense8, it’s a new Netflix series where eight men and women share each other’s thoughts, sensations, and knowledge. It’s a pretty good series but I’ll admit it got our attention because of the posts going around on the web about the hot group scene between most of the males. All inside their head of course.
But the series does have more going for it than naked bodies. The show has really gone for diversity so there’s an African man, a Korean woman, a Mexican gay couple, a mixed race lesbian couple (of which one of the women is transgender) and of course some other white people including an Icelandic woman. (That alone gets my vote.).
While watching a couple of episodes, our friend made the comment that his cousin had started watching it and gave up after a couple of episodes because it “pushed the gay agenda too much.” This drew hisses from my husband and me, and it got us talking about how insidious that term “gay agenda” is.
Because to us, watching a show that shows diversity – and, to be honest, shows us – is going to get us much more interested than a series that’s about all white, straight, middle America – which is what you see on most TV and at the movies. To represent diversity, even if in some instances it is clichéd and stereotypical, it at the minimum shows that these people (ie us and anyone else who’s not mainstream) exist and – shock horror – are also human.
To use the term “gay agenda” is about as offensive as using the “black agenda” or the “Jewish agenda” or anything Other that “threatens” the status quo. As if giving the “others” their equal rights and equal representation will somehow diminish what the mainstream gets. The only thing it diminishes is their self-claimed right to discriminate.
Hilary Clinton released her “gay rights are human rights” video (embedded below) on 24 June 2015 as part of her campaign strategy. I haven’t dared to go looking at what her detractors are saying about this video and this stance, but what I will say is that it means a lot to see a presidential candidate (particularly one who has a good chance of winning) taking a stand on this.
Whether it’s done from a purely political standpoint or from one of genuine belief, it’s still amazing to see – even in this day and age when you’d think we had progressed so much.
But you know what, if Hilary’s video is part of the gay agenda, and TV shows representing diversity is part of the gay agenda, then I’m all for it. Because we need more acceptance, not less. And we need more equality, not less. Don’t you agree?
Wow, that video gave me the feels!