A Television Coming Out Story from 1961

[William769]

The visibility of LGBT people on television has reached a magnitude many of us never imagined. From the characters on Glee and Grey’s Anatomy to the real life personalities of Ellen and RuPaul, TV has mainstreamed the queer community by introducing them into homes across the country. While commonplace today, few are aware that 50 years ago, on September 11, 1961, the very first televised documentary on homosexuality cracked open the closet door with a thoughtful discussion about sexual orientation for audiences weaned on straight domesticity.

A year of media milestones for the gay community arrived in 1961. The publication of Jess Stearn’s book, The Sixth Man startled the American public with its pronouncement that homosexuality “affected” one in six men. The Motion Picture Association of America lifted the ban on the overt portrayal of homosexuality in Hollywood films. On network TV homosexual subtext was still unacceptable, but John W. Reavis, Jr.’s groundbreaking documentary, The Rejected airing on San Francisco’s educational television station KQED, unemotionally examined the plight and social treatment of the male homosexual.

Reavis, with co-producer Irving Saraf, spent months examining existing research, conducting interviews and courting experts from the fields of anthropology, law, medicine and religion to provide on-camera statistics and opinions on the subject. He also solicited the participation of three members of the Mattachine Society to represent the gay point of view. Rebuffed by the major New York networks, Reavis’s script eventually found support from Jonathan Rice, one of the original founders of KQED, and James Day, the station’s general manager. “KQED was famous for taking on difficult issues,” recalled Day, whose decision gave the ultimate green light for production of the documentary. “My philosophy was that we wouldn’t get interesting things on the air unless I took the chance. These things ought to be discussed, and that’s the purpose of public television, to take on the difficult things that network television will not take on.”

The Rejected is constructed in the form of a panel discussion in which each of the participants offers their professional and personal expertise on the subject of homosexuality to an unseen interviewer. This way, Reavis hoped that the panel’s broad range of views on the homosexual stereotype would create overall contradictions and challenge the audience to reassess its own opinions on the subject.

http://www.advocate.com/Politics/Commentary/Op_ed_A_Television_Coming_Out_Story_from_1961/