Love/Hate: Queer As Folk

Members of the GLBT community either love or hate Showtime’s now late show, Queer As Folk.  I loved it and still love it.  I first remember hearing that the show was coming to America having first started in the UK.  At the time, I purchased the original Queer As Folk (QAF) series from Britain.  It was literally one of the best things I had ever seen.  It was a glimpse into a truly dramatized gay life.  Now many will say that QAF does not accurately reflect the gay and lesbian community.  Well, of course it doesn’t.  What is the chance that there are a group of seven people who experience every gay issue on the face of the planet?  None!  Is it worse than daytime TV?  Actually, it was a lot better.

What both series did was validate me as a young gay male.  In the year 2000 when the American QAF started, I was only one year out of the closet and highly insecure about being a gay male.  I felt alone and really did not know many, if any other gay males.  To see gay characters in a somewhat real setting was outrageously exciting.  

I may have started watching it on the second run of the first year.  That would place me in Long Island at a time having just moved from living for nine months in Pittsburgh, where the show was set.  It was filmed in Toronto.  Actually, Pittsburgh does have a Liberty Avenue, but it is no way as exciting as the Church Street in Toronto that you saw on the show.  In fact, someone recently told me that Toronto’s gay club district was pretty well misrepresented also.  Who cares?

I had to be home every Sunday night to watch QAF.  It was a staple in my life for the first few seasons, the rest I’ve seen on DVD.  I experienced those emotional ups and downs with the characters.  It was a view into a world and lifestyle that I somehow belong to.  Let’s face it, high drama is part of the life of everyone, straight or gay.  Combine that with great writing and phenomenal actors and you have a recipe for a great show.

There are people out there that believe that drugs and promiscuous sex are not that prevalent in the GLBT community.  I’m here to tell you that that is just not true.  You cannot walk into a bar/club in New York and not see someone high.  I’ve seen people doing bumps and hits of whatever on the dance floor… more than once.  Also, you put two men together and they will have sex.  It’s a simple fact of life.  Most men are highly sexual beings and want to do it all the time.  We did see a lot of that on QAF and it shocked me the first time around, but I have later come to learn that it is somewhat factual.  Do the bars fill up on a Saturday night in Pittsburgh?  Not usually.  The “upscale” bathhouse is where the guys go.  We like sex, what can I say.

Queer As Folk meant a lot of things to a lot of different people.  For those of us who liked it, it was worth seeing a vivid portrayal of people in the community who had never seen gay people in their own environs before.  I applaud the actors for putting their careers on the line for a show that they believed in.  I also applaud Randy Harrison, Robert Gant, and Peter Paige for breaking the gay code of silence in Hollywood.  The show helped a lot of people and I’m glad it was there to help me come out of my shell and have the knowledge and power to come out to everyone.

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