Trying to Find the LGBT Voter? Read this First!

This summer, Logo is premiering our new series Sordid Lives: The Series starring some of Hollywood's most beloved stars like Olivia Newton-John, Rue McClanahan, Caroline Rhea, Leslie Jordan and Beth Grant. The 12 episode series, airing Wednesdays at 10:00PM is about a dysfunctional southern family -- some have described it as "August: Osage County," as conceived by John Waters.

But as much as the show is a loving satire on a southern family, the strategy behind Logo's greenlight of this series is also a reflection of the changing face of LGBT Americans. We aren't just more comfortable being who we are, but we are just as comfortable living our lives fully integrated.

For many LGBT people coming of age in the 1970s, 1980s and even 1990s, we felt a sense of restriction: too many of us felt like we could only live in a gay ghetto, pursue jobs that provided anonymity or only hang out with our gay friends.

The team at Logo, the three-year-old 24/7 cable channel and online and digital provider from MTV Networks, wanted to get a sense of where our audience is in the 2000s, a time of great advancement for LGBT people. So Logo conducted extensive qualitative and quantitative research earlier this year. The results, revealed here for the first time, show a striking generational shift in the LGBT population.

More and more gay people -- particularly the younger generation who are coming out much earlier than the generations that preceded them -- expect to live their lives the way they choose, with no restrictions, no roadblocks and perhaps most important, no diminishment of identity.

· We're trading in West Hollywood for Westchester and West Texas. Our study found that less than half of gay people (46 percent) want to live in the city and the majority wants to live in suburbia or a small town.

· We're tossing away big disposable incomes for disposable diapers. Two-thirds of younger gay people expect to be partnered with kids at some point.

· Forget The Boys in the Band. Younger gays report that they have equal numbers of gay and straight friends.

Most heartening is that despite this incredible shift toward a traditional American life, LGBT people are not abandoning community or identity. They're passionate about gay civil rights issues and, no matter how integrated their lives are, they want a gay community close to home.

And we found the same parallel in the way LGBT people want to consume media. In the 1996 film, Celluloid Closet, Harvey Fierstein talked about the need to "translate" mainstream films in order to connect with them emotionally. Just imagine The Way We Were with Paul Newman in place of Barbra Streisand.

So this generation of LGBT people, despite their love for mainstream entertainment, wants the trend toward more LGBT storytelling to continue. They express a strong desire for movies, TV shows, news and information that speak to their experiences and their lives.

That means LGBT people will likely reject an old-school approach to gay entertainment where straight people were like the adults in Peanuts cartoons -- non-existent. Which is why Sordid Lives: The Series is representative of this dynamic. The show has one central gay character and tells the story of the eccentric family members around him.

The research we conducted is a beacon for any entity trying to reach the vital LGBT audience, especially the hundreds of politicians wooing the gay vote this November. We're not the monolithic stereotype from the 70s, 80s and 90s. We want to be reached out to, respected and, above all, spoken to for who we are -- a young couple raising kids in the Atlanta suburbs, a senior in Florida, a family in small town Minnesota or a single person in Chicago.

Most important, a rapidly evolving LGBT community -- one that is even prouder, more integrated and seeking out the richest lives for us and our neighbors -- is a development that is good for America.

Comments

[dexxjones]

very cool. if the show is available on unbox or itunes, i'm there.

[rainbowblue]

I'm 24 and an out and proud gay man. Your thesis is only half true. From my end, my straight friends don't understand me and my gay friends, so we choose to hang out more with each other than with our straight counterparts. I lived in straight America growing up, so I have no plans what so ever to ditch a more clustered "gay gehtto". Besides, it is in a "gay gehtto" than I feel more free to be me. I doesn't take anything more than getting a gym membership where I can be shown all the benfits that it would have for my family (like child care...I'm 24 years old, I shouldn't have kids yet). Maybe I will feel the way you do when I'm 35 and maybe in long term partnership, but I doubt it. Moving to the suburbs waters down gay life. Where are the bears in the suburbs? Where are the drag queens? Where are the gay bars and clubs? The best part of our community is that we are as diverse as a rainbow, and this article betrays this quality a little by insisting that soon we will be the same as our straight counterparts, living in the suburbs and raising (to borrow from Kathy Griffin) "gaybabies".

[situationcritical]

I totally agree. The "straight" world isn't all that fascinating, nor engaging for me and most of my friends.

[AngryAmish]

By all means, to the extent that it"s even possible to exclude the straight world from your daily life, you should try to create and inhabit a "gay world" that fulfills your need to feel safe and understood and valuable. Shared experience is a good thing. But I would caution you not to categorically exclude straight folk as candidates for friendship. Gays and lesbians cannot demand acceptance and equality without the support of sympathetic straight people, who arguably have more power than we have to influence the behavior and attitudes of the dominant culture"because they ARE the dominant culture.

And besides, as I grow older, I find that my friendships with straight men are in many ways more rewarding, less high maintenance than my friendships with my fellow "mos. My straight best friend doesn"t comment constantly on my appearance (Aging? Balding? Growing fat? Wearing last year"s Diesels?), and he doesn"t abandon me at the bar at 2 a.m. for a trick with a random stranger: he walks me home, as a good friend should. And if I"m in the mood to trick with a random stranger? Well, I just call up my gay friends and go on the prowl, and them are good times, too!

[feministhousewife]

I'm not sure that the article insists that we will all soon be "the same" as straight people, it's just showing that as a community, we know feel that we have more options - that there is no longer just one way to be gay.

As for living in the suburbs, she did mention, "no matter how integrated their lives are, they want a gay community close to home."

So while we may not feel the need to live IN the "gayborhood" we do want to be close. I can definitely relate to this. I am a married lesbian who will be starting a family soon - housing in major cities is often too expensive for those of us who are having children - especially if you want more than one or two and a large enough home to hold everyone! Just because we want to live in the suburbs doesn't mean we want to be disconnected from the city - I hope my wife and I will be able to buy our first house in a an area that is nearby and easily accessible to the city so that both we and our future children can enjoy the diversity that the city offers, while living in comfortable home that we can afford.

[Deaninphilly]

I guess logo didn't do any research asking the question, how do you like watching the same shows over and over and over? Watched the show already, like seeing some of the stars back on the tube, but who selected some of the others? Can the acting get any worse?

[S1m0n]

Like "Soap", except with Billy Crystal as the token straight guy...

[SouthJerseySteve]

Very good article--except it's BARBRA and not Barbara Streisand. We over 45 gays would not approve of misspelling Ms. Streisand's name!

[JohnFromCensornati]

Actually, I'm OK with it.

[AngryAmish]

OK with it? Blasphemer!