Will we ever see serious openly gay / lesbian characters in western animation?

If he was biologically a man at first, he's gay. He even told Faye he swung the other way when she flirted with him. It's possible that his female hormones were swinging him, but I got the feeling he was always gay.
 
I would say there's a grey area whenever we're talking about aliens being gay or straight but Jumbaa and Pleakley strike me as being indicative of a coded gay male couple. The problem is the market doesn't support anything more than coding right now but representations of the closet case are part of franchise fare now. http://www.projectpdd.com/
 
It's easy to come out and say something like this long after a show or series has aired when the networks don't give a crap anymore. I'm talking about a show while it's still running, and a character is clearly gay to the viewers. I'm not saying that shows SHOULD hit a characters' sexuality over the viewers' heads, but this thread is specifically about gay characters, so I think we should deal with it from that perspective.

Same reason I always thought JK Rowling's "Dumbledore is gay" was so forced.

Fan: Is Dumbledore gay?
Rowling: Yeah, why not. (I've already made my money anyway, and the series is done so no harm to the sales.)
Crowd: WHOOOAAAAAA WHO KNEW
 
Okay. But I don't know why writers still need to hint at homosexuality instead of being open about it. Very few "straight" romances are "hinted at" in most western entertainment, but when someone is gay it's usually "subtle" or "ambiguous."
 
It's because western society as a whole is not yet comfortable with homosexuality. Once homosexuals can get married in any state in America I think we'll finally begin to see open gay characters.
 
I think some portions of the media have tried to get on the "it's trendy and hip to be gay" bandwagon, and there is a kind of backlash from it unfortunately.
 
Last year Archie Comics introduced an openly gay character named Kevin. This makes me wonder, if they ever decide to make a new Archie animated series, will they be allowed to use the character of Kevin? They might, but without ever mentioning his homosexuality.
 
Well, maybe for the *US*, though gay marriage is already legal in several states (Iowa and several New England/east coast states). Meanwhile, gay marriage is legal nationwide throughout Canada (and several European countries), and "separate but equal" civil unions/domestic partnerships exist in many western nations (and various US states).

Of course, American society (vs. other Western countries) seems to have a problem with sex/sexuality being treated in any mature way, while having no problem with violence by the metric ton at all levels of entertainment...
 
That's not really true. It's just that anti-violence is more of a liberal thing, while anti-sex is more of a conservative thing. The U.S. has a much stronger conservative lean than other western countries, but there's still a very vocal anti-violence crowd who absolutely hates all things Power Rangers and Ninja Turtles.
 
I'm a liberal who hates all things Power Rangers, but not to do with violence. ;-)

We have the "OMG violence" parents groups yes, but they're a smaller protest voice versus the "OMG Janet Jackson's naked!"/"OMG 'Postcards From Buster' featured lesbian parents!" contingent. While violence of course has been censored in kids' shows (see: Looney Tunes' slicing-and-dicing on TV over the years), suspect such parents' groups would be way more up in arms over openly-LGBT characters in kids shows than seeing the characters blast each other to smithereens... meh.
 
Well i think it is still worth talking about...
Afterall subtext is were displaying an openly gay character starts. I mean unless you provide a gay character a lover, or outright have them SAY they are gay (show don't tell) subtext is the manner of which you would use to show a character is gay without outright stating it. Frankly, if we can't get an openly gay couple, i think it would be nice to have the kind of subtext that makes it somewhat obvious... unlike what we've gotten so far which is so subtle that most would never suspect and the few that do require word of God to be sure
 
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