The Prime Time Closet: A History of Gays and Lesbians on TV (15 page)

The least developed of the stories involves Lesniak, who is transferred from the Bronx because she had an affair with another officer, Det. Abruzzo (Bruce Nozick), who’d become obsessed with her. One day he pulls a revolver on her in the squad room (“Simone Says”), but he is apprehended and shipped off to Bellevue. Lesniak is understandably not interested in getting into a romantic relationship, particularly with a co-worker. So when she discovers Det. James Martinez (Nicholas Turturro) has his eye on her, she asks his partner, Det. Medavoy (Gordon Clapp), to tell him she is a lesbian (“One Big Happy Family”). Without thinking, an upset Martinez tells someone in the precinct, who, of course, starts spreading the word (“Heavin’ Can Wait”). When the precinct’s gay PAA (Principal/Police Administrative Assistant), John Irvin (Bill Brochtrup), hears the news, he invites Lesniak to a Gay Officer Action League (GOAL) meeting (“Dirty Laundry”). She admits to Irvin she only wanted to get Martinez off her back.

So is Lesniak a lesbian? The answer is sort of, but not really. Lesniak lied to Medavoy and Martinez, but she later admits to Det. Russell (Kim Delaney) she is questioning her sexuality (“Curt Russell”) and did attend a GOAL meeting, but didn’t feel comfortable. It is unclear whether the writers changed their minds about Lesniak’s sexuality midstream or, perhaps, like Lesniak herself, couldn’t decide.

The story begins to fall apart when Lesniak reveals she is questioning her sexuality because she’s been in a series of bad relationships with men. The idea that she’s sexually attracted to other women (considered by many a prerequisite for being a lesbian) is never really addressed. Lesniak does eventually become romantically involved with Martinez (“The Nutty Confessor”), but he eventually breaks up with her when she gets too clingy. At the end of season three, her character is written out of the series (“Auntie Maimed”).

At the start of the following season, a real live, 100 percent, bona fide lesbian police officer named Abby Sullivan (Paige Turco) is introduced. Perhaps as a way of remedying the quasi-lesbian story line from the previous season, there is no waffling about Abby’s sexuality. She comes out when Medavoy asks her out on a date (“Unembraceable You”), although Martinez wonders if she could be lying like Lesniak. But her sexual orientation is confirmed by Medavoy when he joins Abby and her lover Kathy (Lisa Darr) for dinner (“A Wrenching Experience”). The couple think Medavoy is a great guy, and so they later ask him to be a sperm donor for their baby. He agrees and when the fourth season opens, Abby is pregnant.

The Medavoy-Abby-Kathy story line had great potential because it had none of the trappings of the Lesniak plot’s hangups. Abby was not pretending to be a lesbian, nor was she the victim of a failed heterosexual relationship. Furthermore, Abby and Kathy are a happy, stable lesbian couple. This would all soon change (“Three Girls and a Baby”) when a man enters the couple’s apartment and guns down Kathy. The detectives grow suspicious because there is no apparent motive and, at one point, they actually begin to suspect the pregnant Abby of killing Kathy during an argument. While the circumstances around the murder are suspicious, the idea that Abby would be considered a suspect is implausible because she had no motive and it would have been way too out of character.

The killer turns out to be another lesbian, Abby’s psycho ex-lover Denise (Ashley Gardner), who hired a killer to rub out Kathy so she can be reunited with Abby. During questioning, Denise explains she tore up Abby’s car “in the fit of love” and shows no remorse for hiring a gunman to kill Kathy. As Medavoy explains to Abby, Denise crossed the line of understanding the difference between right and wrong. The same line was transgressed by the series’s writers, who were too quick to counteract positive lesbian characters with a tired old stereotype like the unstable, deranged lesbian. The following season, Abby, like Lesniak, disappeared. We’re informed she moved upstate, where she has her baby. No doubt her character is safer living away from New York (and the show’s writing staff).

N.Y.P.D Blue
struck out a third time (“Thumb Enchanted Evening”) with the brief introduction of another lesbian character, Lt. Dalto (Denise Crosby). Reassigned from the “rat squad” (officers and detectives in the Internal Affairs Bureau), Dalto was called in to replace the departing (and recently promoted) Capt. Fancy (James MacDaniel). Before she even walks through the door, Irvin “outs” her by telling the rest of the squad she is a member of GOAL (and therefore a lesbian) and a real by-the-book “ball buster.” His description is accurate because when she meets her squad for the first time, she is terse, dismissive, and condescending. She comments on the female detectives’ inappropriate footwear, immediately considers rearranging the detectives’ partner assignments and desks, and tells Sipowicz to remove his fish tank and John a tchotchke from his desk. As Sipowicz says, she’s never going to change; no one will dare tell her to because “she’s a lesbian woman, got that double minority clout, no one’s going to risk getting in front of that.” The following week (“Flight of Fancy”), Fancy, realizing Dalto is the wrong choice for his successor, calls in a favor and has her reassigned. She is angry, but Fancy points out she has succeeded in alienating an entire squad of detectives in 48 hours.

There is no question that Dalto was the wrong choice to supervise this somewhat unorthodox team of detectives, but why did the writers make her a lesbian? The implication — in this case it’s difficult to believe it was not intentional — is that her “ball-busting” managerial style is intrinsic to her sexual orientation. Just as troubling was the decision to have the only other gay character on the show “out” her and smear her name. Her “castrating” nature is further compounded by a subplot line involving a man who is literally, albeit partially, emasculated when a male hustler named Shorty (Terence L. Bloom) bites off part of his penis for shorting him the agreed fee. (The remaining part of his member is later found at an ATM machine.) Surprisingly, Dalto is not considered a suspect.

While female officers on shows like
Bronk
and
Police Woman
were falsely accused of being lesbians, 1970s series like
Streets of San Francisco
and
Starsky and Hutch
featured actual gay male policemen and detectives. Gay men working in such a high testosterone profession often find it difficult to keep their private lives private. Once a gay cop goes public, he must contend with his homophobic superiors, co-workers, and partner, who is usually the last to know and the hardest hit. He typically “outs” himself because he’s being blackmailed or has witnessed a hate crime (a shooting in a gay bar, gay bashing, etc.). Coming out is therefore not a personal choice, but a professional and moral obligation.

One of the earliest examples contains all the major story elements, later repeated by other popular law and order dramas. On
The Streets of San Francisco
(“A Good Cop, But...”), a gay detective, Inspector Lambert (Barry Primus) must come out of the closet to convict a drug kingpin. An attempt by one of the kingpin’s men to blackmail him backfires when Lambert tapes their conversation and agrees to play the recording in open court. His partner, Ernie (Robert Walden), who had no clue, feels betrayed and immediately puts in for a transfer. But when Ernie hears Lambert’s brave testimony during the trial, he has a change of heart.

Not all gay detectives are so lucky. On
Starsky and Hutch
(“Death in a Different Place”), John Blaine (Art Fleming) picks up a hustler, Nick Hunter (Gregory Rozakis), who drugs the detective, accompanies him back to his seedy hotel room, and robs him. While in the lobby of the hotel, Blaine sees a crooked narc named Lt. Corday (Don Gordon) making a drug deal. So after Nick robs Blaine, who has by now passed out, Corday murders him. With a reluctant Nick’s help, Starsky (Paul Michael Glaser) and Hutch (David Soul) manage to catch Corday. The gay angle ultimately has little to do with the otherwise familiar corrupt cop plot, except for providing the perfect milieu for the final scene — a seedy gay bar called The Green Parrot.

The series’s final tag does include a funny, self-reflective exchange between Starsky and Hutch in which they acknowledge the homoerotic undertones of their relationship:

There’s definitely chemistry between Starsky and Hutch (or should I say Soul and Glaser?) and the producers enjoyed having the duo go undercover, particularly when it involves a stereotypically gay profession. In “Dandruff,” Starsky and Hutch pose as hairdressers, Mr. Marlene and Mr. Tyrone, at a hotel salon to uncover a jewel heist. In “Tap Dancing Their Way Into Your Hearts” (directed by Fernando Lamas!), they pose as dancers in a Hollywood dance studio to break an extortion ring. Although the heterosexuality of both characters was repeatedly affirmed, usually by the obligatory shot of one or both detectives checking out a beautiful woman, it will always be difficult to imagine Starsky without Hutch (and vice-versa).

Gay cops were not just limited to detective series. The newspaper drama
Lou Grant
tackled the subject in a compelling episode (“Cop”) about a series of unrelated gay murders which claim the life of Grant’s neighbor and five people who perish in a gay bar fire. Grant (Ed Asner) and reporter Joe Rossi (Robert Walden) realize one of the policeman investigating the case, Mike Tynan (Joe Penny), is gay. However, he’s kept his sexual identity hidden from the force, including his partner Robert Denahay (Ed Winter). When Denahay finds out, he puts in for a transfer because he feels Tynan is unfit to be a police officer. But when Tynan saves his life during a shootout, Denahay changes his tune.

“Cop” is an outstanding episode that raises ethical questions surrounding the press’s obligation to report a story vs. the people’s right to know. The issue is first raised when Grant insists the
Tribune
publish the names of the five men who died in the gay bar fire. Consequently, they would all be labeled gay, which is problematic if they were married and/or not out to their families. “If the newspaper doesn’t print the names this time,” Grant asks, “how can the public know that we’re not withholding other information from them in the future?” The
Tribune’s
owner, Mrs. Pynchon (Nancy Marchand), eventually agrees. (The story was based on a real-life incident in which eight people perished in a fire in a gay film club in Washington, D.C.
³⁹
) The decision ties back into the Tynan plot when the
Tribune,
in keeping with their philosophy, doesn’t report the officer is gay because it has no relevance to the capturing of the murder suspect.

Trapper John, M.D.
(“Straight and Narrow”) combined elements of a medical drama with a whodunit plot in which a gay cop is, ironically, shot during a gay rights rally. Joey Santori (Joseph Cali), San Francisco’s first openly gay policeman, is partially paralyzed after being shot in the head. His partner, Sam (Charles Hallahan), blames the gay community for what happened to Joey. “Some fag shot my partner,” Sam tells Dr. Gonzo Gates (Gregory Harrison), “...they want power. There’s already too much fag power in San Francisco!”

When the gay-friendly Gonzo gets a tip that the gunman was a cop, he announces to the press that Joey can identify his assailant. With Sam’s assistance, Gonzo traps the killer, a police detective (Frank Martin), who explains he did it because the police force was being “contaminated.” “You didn’t want fags on the force any more than I did,” he tells Sam, “I had to keep the poison from spreading, from destroying the force.” (Airing the same year as
The New York Times
article about AIDS, words like “contaminating” and “spreading” would soon become standard homophobic rhetoric in America.)

In addition to the “Who shot the gay cop?” plot, there are several gay-related subplots. The first involves Joey’s relationship with his father (Harold J. Stone), who hasn’t spoken to his son since he came out ten years earlier. The second involves the hospital’s homophobic administrator Arnold Slocum (Simon Scott), who realizes that if a cop could be gay, so could a member of his staff. “The problem is that it’s too difficult to tell,” he explains to Dr. Riverside (Charles Seibert). “It’s usually a person you least expect.” (In a
San Francisco
hospital? That’s difficult to believe.) The third story involves a drag queen named Judy (played by
Outrageous
star Craig Russell), who tries to cheer up a lonely, severely depressed patient, Mrs. Gelgood (Janet Brandt) by bringing some much needed gay sunshine into her life.

There’s plenty going on in this well-intentioned episode, which goes to great lengths to demonstrate how homophobia can take many forms: from the homophobic detective/killer, to the father who rejects his gay son, to the homo-hunting hospital administrator. The subplot involving Judy and Mrs. Gelgood is less integral, except perhaps to show acceptance shouldn’t be limited to handsome, seemingly straight gay cops, but includes drag queens as well.

Unlike the
Lou Grant
and
Trapper John,
M.D. episodes, most story lines centered around police officers either targeted by rumors or outed by circumstances out of their control. On
Cagney and Lacey
(“Conduct Unbecoming”), the sexual orientation of a detective assisting the female duo on a weapons case is questioned when his photograph turns up in a gay magazine. On
L.A. Law
(“Outward Bound”), a gay cop sues a journalist who outed him without his permission. Questions regarding a closeted married police officer’s (Paul Carhart) honesty are raised during a murder trial on
The Practice
(“We Hold These Truths”) when the defense discovers he has been living a lie. On
Hill Street Blues
(“Here’s Adventure, Here’s Romance”), a married, off-duty cop, Art Bradley (Lawrence Pressman), who is the only witness to a massacre in a gay bar, decides to come out to his boss Captain Frank Furillo (Daniel J. Travanti). On
Law and Order: Special Victims Unit
(“Bad Blood”), a closeted gay cop (Peter Rini) who attends a gay birthday party provides key evidence in a murder case.

The gay police officer plot is also used to examine issues such as hate crimes and gay bashing. On
The Commish
(“Do You See What I See?”) a gay police officer witnesses a gay bashing outside a gay bar. Officer Hank Ranavich (John Brennan) is forced to step forward and file a report. When his fellow officers find out he is gay, he is verbally harassed. Even his partner, Jon Hibbs (Ian Tracey), wants nothing to do with him, until Ranavich is bashed by the same men, who ironically work for a charity organization. Hibbs goes undercover at the organization as a gay man and is almost bashed himself, but luckily Commissioner Scali (Michael Chiklis) arrives just in time to rescue him.

When a straight cop like Hibbs finds out his partner is gay, he can only accept his friend’s sexual orientation by becoming personally involved in the case himself (and in some instances emerge as a hero). While Hibbs’s heroism is a way for him to redeem himself for rejecting his gay partner, it also suggests that acceptance is contingent on empathy. Unfortunately, not every gay police officer has a member of the force on his side. Consequently, homophobia within the force itself can produce tragic results.

On a memorable episode of
Law and Order
(“Manhood”), a gay cop is badly wounded in a shootout. Back-up is called but arrives too late and the officer dies. The detectives assigned to the case are suspicious and question the dead cop’s partner, Craig McGraw (Adam Trese), who shows them an anti-gay flyer that circulated around the precinct. One of the suspects, Officer Weddeker (Sam Rockwell) eventually breaks down and admits, “they just wanted to scare him. They didn’t think he was going to die!”

The district attorney decides to prosecute Weddeker and the two other officers for intentionally leaving a fellow cop to die. The D.A. loses his case because the defense puts a psychiatrist on the stand who states that heterosexual men’s hatred of homosexuals is pathological and therefore uncontrollable. The episode makes a point that homophobia, or any form of bigotry for that matter, can be legitimized when it involves a group. As D.A. Adam Schiff (Steven Hill) and Executive Assistant District Attorney Ben Stone (Michael Moriarity) lament in the final scene, “four cops let him die and twelve citizens did it again. And they voted their indifference.” The episode, directed by Ed Sherin and written by Robert Nathan (from a story by Nathan and Walon Green), received a 1993 GLAAD/LA Award for Outstanding Dramatic Television Episode.

With so many gay cops on television, one would think it was only a matter of time before a police drama would include one as a series regular. Still, long-running law and order dramas like
Hill Street Blues
,
Law and Order,
and
N.Y.P.D. Blue
have never included gay male cops and detective as regular or recurring characters. However, there are some notable exceptions.

The first is
Hooperman,
a dramedy starring John Ritter as a San Francisco police detective. The series was created by Steven Bochco, the man behind
Hill Street Blues
and
N.Y.P.D. Blue
. Among the police officers at the Hooperman’s station is Rick Silardi (Joseph Gian), a handsome, openly gay cop who is forced to remind his man-hungry partner, Officer Maureen “Mo” DeMott (Sydney Walsh) he is not (and will never be) heterosexual. Even her not-so-subtle flirting with Vinnie Corral (Geoffrey Scott), a movie star who rides along with her and Silardi to research an upcoming film role, is all in vain (“Don We Now Our Gay Apparel”). DeMott may have her eye on Corral, but he’s only interested in Silardi, who he asks out on a date.

As Silardi’s homosexuality is generally known and accepted in his division, the homophobia he faces usually comes from outside, including his macho twin brother, Bob (Gian in a double role), who is also a cop. In “Surprise Party,” Bob is ashamed his brother is gay and blames him for causing their parents grief. “You should have stayed in the closet,” Bob sneers. Bob’s homophobia eventually gets him into trouble when he attacks a gay deputy district attorney, who, thinking he is Rick, mistakenly tries to make a date with Bob. Bob goes ballistic and lands in jail. After some convincing from a sympathetic Hooperman, Rick convinces the D.A. to drop the charges and the two brothers reconcile.