Living among Queer As Folk's predominantly gay male cadre is a lesbian couple, Lindsay Peterson (Thea Gill) and Melanie Marcus (Michelle Clunie), who serve as dual mothers to Gus, the infant offspring of Lindsay and Brian. The two women have the show's longest-running relationship.

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Lindsay and Mel helped pave the way for another Showtime series, the steamy lesbian hit The L Word, which premiered in January 2004. Although The L Word has been widely praised, it has also drawn criticism similar to that received by Queer As Folk. Constance Reeder, columnist for the lesbian publication off our backs, has complained that The L Word is not groundbreaking TV, but is, instead, "Queer As Folk with breasts."

However, queer theorist Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick has noted that, while the show is certainly not "edgy" in its "relation to reality or political process," it is nevertheless "absurdly luxurious" in its exploration of the "portrayal of generational dynamics in this group of women, even if only between thirtysomethings and twentysomethings."

Like its predecessor Queer As Folk, The L Word has thrived on controversy. While Queer As Folk will end its run in 2006, The L Word was renewed for a second season only two weeks after its debut. The eagerly anticipated season two began airing in February 2005.

Another cable dramatic series that features queer characters is HBO's Six Feet Under, which debuted to critical acclaim in 2001. Developed and written and frequently directed by Alan Ball, who won a 1999 Academy Award for his screenplay for the film American Beauty, the show focuses on a family who own and operate a funeral home in Los Angeles.

Younger son David Fisher (Michael C. Hall) came out to his family in an early episode, and the show frequently follows his attempts to find a replacement for his former lover Keith Charles (Matthew St. Patrick), a Los Angeles police officer who broke up with David because he was not honest about his homosexuality. In casting the gay son as the "stable" member of the dysfunctional family and in treating the interracial relationship between David and Keith sympathetically and matter-of-factly, Six Feet Under normalizes homosexuality.

In May 2004 producers of another HBO television drama, The Sopranos, announced that Joseph Gannascoli, who plays Vito Spatafore on the hit show, would come out as a gay mobster. Gannascoli explained that he relished the chance to play a gay character, and said that he wanted to be "effeminate but knockaround."

But perhaps the most significant achievement in glbtq representation in American television drama came in December 2003, when HBO premiered a six-hour, $60 million presentation of Tony Kushner's pathbreaking AIDS epic Angels in America, directed by Mike Nichols. Angels, which featured an all-star cast including Meryl Streep, Emma Thompson, and Al Pacino, received rave reviews and garnered an astonishing 11 Emmy Awards.

Emma Thompson, in an Advocate interview about her response to the play, remarked "I opened the play, read the first couple of pages, rang Mike [director Mike Nichols], and said 'I'll do it.' The writing has that effect on you. It's so remarkable."

Television portrayals of homosexuals have made significant strides since the homophobic images seen in the late 1960s and early 1970s. In time, perhaps, there will be an all-queer series appearing on a broadcast network, so stay tuned.

In the twenty years since its first appearance in the West, AIDS has been the subject of a large body of literature, most of it written by gay men and much of it designed to expose readers as closely as possible to the emergency of the epidemic and the suffering of affected individuals.

Although glbtq people and issues have been inadequately covered by American television news, there have recently been signs of improvement.

Reality television viewers have come increasingly to expect the appearance of gay men and lesbians on these shows because their presence helps further underscore the "reality" in Reality TV.

American television sitcoms have consistently reflected the presence of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered people, often in distorted and stereotyped ways, but occasionally in ways that acknowledge our humanity and complexity.

Treatments of gay relationships on network soap operas have always been limited; recently, however, gays and lesbians have created their own soap operas to tell the convoluted stories of lesbian and gay entanglements.

For glbt people, television talk shows are both promising and problematic; they have brought glbt issues to public awareness, but they have also presented glbt people as stereotypes and freaks.

Historically either distrusted as agents of chaos or admired as examples of female power and intelligence, Amazons were depicted as heterosexual until the twentieth century, when lesbians adopted them as symbols of powerful women living without men.

Unlike many child stars, Chad Allen has successfully made the transition to accomplished adult actor; he has also come out as a gay man and become an advocate for glbtq rights.

A leading contemporary American playwright, Jon Robin Baitz produces works that are both morally serious and politically conscious.

Award-winning screenwriter, director, and producer Alan Ball, whose work frequently features glbtq characters, has had great success in both film and television.

Academy Award-winning screenwriter Dustin Lance Black has quickly established himself as both an accomplished filmmaker and a committed activist.

The highest-ranking official in the United States military to acknowledge her homosexuality while in the service, Colonel Margarethe Cammermeyer served a number of years in the Washington State National Guard as an open lesbian.

Although pioneering film and television director Donna Deitch is best known for Desert Hearts, a classic of lesbian cinema, she has also made other films that probe gay and lesbian relationships

The "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy, in effect since 1993, was a compromise intended to end discrimination against gay men and lesbians in the U. S. military, but it has failed to halt discharges based solely on sexual orientation.

The Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) is a watchdog group dedicated to promoting accurate representations of the glbtq community in the media.

Actress Sara Gilbert, who became a favorite with lesbian audiences for her portrayal of tomboy Darlene on the long-running television series Roseanne, came out publicly as a lesbian in 2004.

Playwright, librettist, and educator William M. Hoffman is best known for his ground-breaking play As Is, one of the first theatrical works to focus on the AIDS epidemic.

Out lesbian actress Jane Lynch has forged a successful career on television, in movies, and on the stage, including some memorable turns portraying lesbian characters.

Texas-reared Terrence McNally, whose first play, And Things That Go Bump in the Night, was one of the great scandals of the 1964 New York season, emerged in the 1990s as America's most important gay playwright since Tennessee Williams.

Award-winning actress Cynthia Nixon recently acknowledged publicly that she is bisexual and in a loving relationship with a woman.

Film director and producer Bryan Singer overturns standard narrative formulae and develops complex characters; he consistently emphasizes the fluidity and ambiguity of identity categories, including those pertaining to gender and sexuality.

Best known to television viewers for his role as Major Charles Emerson Winchester III on the series M*A*S*H, David Ogden Stiers has had a long and successful career.

Screenwriter-producer-director Kevin Williamson is best known as the writer of clever, self-referential horror films and as the creator of the groundbreaking television series Dawson's Creek.

Prolific film, television, and stage producers Craig Zadan and Neil Meron have created a diverse body of work, including a number of theatrical films and television features with glbtq themes.