Get Back in the Closet: Difference between revisions

The tendency of [[Moral Guardians]] to be harsher toward homosexuality than heterosexuality. In American media, male/female couples can kiss and make out, but even a slight peck from a same-sex couple is an automatic PG-13, if not an R. And of course, there's no way to include even a tame sex scene without getting an R or NC-17 rating. [[Unfortunate Implications]] of this become [[Values Dissonance|even more apparent]] as gay people become more accepted and equal in society.

 

{{examples}}

* [[CBS]] announced it would accept a TV ad for the 2010 Super Bowl from a pro-life group, in a change from the network's "no controversy" policy. However, CBS turned down an ad from Mancrunch.com, a gay dating service. The network has had no problem with heterosexual dating services, such as eHarmony. Of course, there's no way a small site like Man Crunch could have paid for the ad, and so submitted an ad [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0VMqHb03p74 just beyond what would have been acceptable] just so they could get publicity for it being turned down.

** Similarly, the pro-life group had a religious orientation... and skeptics brought up how CBS had earlier turned away an ad from the United Church of Christ that depicted bouncers turning away gay people (among others) from church services.

 

** The screenshot of the kiss remained intact for Sasuke's almost-death collage of flashbacks, and a similar image is used for the 5th English opening as well.

 

* This is supposedly the sole reason why the ''Rawhide Kid'' mini [[Marvel Comics]] died a while back was in the MAX imprint, even if he was just somewhat hinted to be gay.[http://www.cracked.com/article_18502_the-5-most-unintentionally-offensive-comic-book-characters.html Through constant and offensive innuendo].

 

* Works of slash often raise their ratings for exactly this reason, and homosexual content is often listed as a warning alongside violence and nudity. This system is even present at some fan fiction recommendation pages on this site.

** In revenge, some writers started [[Het Is Ew|warning for heterosexual content]].

 

* The documentary ''[[This Film Is Not Yet Rated]]'' had additional examples of this: It showed straight and gay sex scenes with similar action, positions and lighting side-by-side on the screen, then pointed out that the films with gay scenes almost invariably had far stronger ratings (usually NC-17 as opposed to R).

* In ''[[I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry]]'', the filmmakers originally planned for the two male leads to kiss there in court, but the MPAA threatened to rate it R if they did. Instead, they just got extremely close.

**** Now averted; ''[[I Love You Phillip Morris]]'' has now been mainstream released in the US.

 

* In the summer of 2011, Trisha Telep, an editor of various anthologies rejected YA author Jessica Verday's short story on account of it being [[Boys Love]], saying it was too risque for a Young Adult audience. [[But Not Too Gay|Never mind the fact that some of Telep's previous anthologies had far more explicit heterosexual content (i.e. foreplay,) drug use, violence, and foul language.]] Telep advised Verday to [[Gender Flip|de-gay]] her story if she wanted to publish it, [[Hide Your Lesbians|which sadly isn't an uncommon occurrence in publishing.]] When Verday posted about it on her website, An [[Internet Counterattack]] ensued and most of the authors featured in the anthology (and some who were involved in Telep's other projects) pulled out in support of Verday.

 

* [[The BBC|BBC America]] took a lot of stick for the edit job they did on Series 3 of ''[[Skins]]''. Cook and Effy graphically rutting in a closet? Fine. Naomi and Emily sharing a tender scene by the lake? Cut to fuck.

* Italian Network Rai2 has aired ''[[Brothers and Sisters]]'' at ''21.55'' because of ''homosexual content'' while airing way racier shows (why, hello ''[[Desperate Housewives]]''!) at earlier times. This baffles the mind.

* Due to Chinese censorship on anything LGBTQ+, every adaptation of ''[[Boys Love Genre|danmei]]'' novels for TV or streaming will drastically reduce any gay content and transform the official homosexual couples of the novels into extremely intense [[Bromance]]s.

 

* On Bing image search, you won't get any results for anything with the words "gay" or "lesbian" in it unless you turn Safe Search off completely (which requires you to say you're 18).

* Similarly, Google Instant won't automatically complete most gay-related searches (including those that are still not NSFW or inappropriate for minors) until you hit Enter. Gay news websites are treated as gingerly as sites with adult content.

* At one point on Craigslist, the "male seeking male" personals page was marked for adult content (meaning both that it was restricted and that racier posts needn't be flagged), whereas the straight and lesbian personals were kept clean, only the "casual encounters" page being marked. Presumably due to complaints, all personals but "strictly platonic" are now marked adult.

* Amazon once marked any book with the keyword "Gay & Lesbian" as adult, meaning that unless a search included those keywords or other "adult" keywords, any books marked with that keyword were excluded, whereas keywords like "homosexual" or "homosexuality" were fine, with the effect that the only books dealing with homosexuality that showed up on general search were [[Heteronormative Crusader|right-wing polemics]]. Amazon first claimed they'd been hacked, then that a single employee had accidentally done it. Whether that is an example of this trope is debatable, since some believe it wasn't deliberate on the company's part.

* [[YouTube]] [http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2012/01/26/video-youtube-pulls-non-family-safe-gay-music-ad/ pulled a 16-second sponsoring ad] that featured two men in their underwear in an emotional embrace, saying it "promoted mature sexual themes" and was "non family safe". It was an excerpt from a [[Perfume Genius]] music video [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OOpkr8uNWpk YouTube still hosts]. Cue [[Internet Backdraft]]. The other man in the video is recognized by ''some'' as the [[Manly Gay]] [[Bear]] porn star Arpad Miklos, but this would not likely be recognized by a random viewer who has never seen an Arpad Miklos porno.

* Internet search filters in some schools prohibit the search of 'gay', 'lesbian', or anything along those lines.

 

 

* Mostly averted with ''[[Mission Hill]]''. Not only did the gay couple (Gus and Wally) get the series a ton of notability for ''not'' being depicted as stereotypical, but the series even got away with having a total make-out scene (''on the first episode'', no less). Then again, ''Mission Hill'' was still "mature" for other reasons (sex scenes with heterosexual couples and the usual offensive language, suggestive dialogue, and drug references), but compared to some shows that had to undergo censorship for this kind of thing, that's pretty impressive.

* The English dub of ''[[Transformers Energon]]'', while not really that great to begin with, made a ham-handed attempt to edit out Mirage/Shockfleet's obvious [[Subordinate Excuse|love for his leader]]. Unfortunately for them they could only bring it down to [[Ho Yay]] levels, as there's no real way to rewrite a blossoming pink heart behind Mirage's transformation sequence after {{spoiler|discovering Megatron was still alive}}.

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Censorship Tropes]]

[[Category:Gender and Sexuality Tropes]]