Mark Stern, Syfy’s executive vice president in charge of original content, made a statement to TV Guide that is sensible enough that I can almost forgive the network for its recent, terrible name change.

Stern said that Syfy is trying for more diversity, but also acknowledged that the network has a way to go. He touted two new series, a new Stargate and the Battlestar Galactica spinoff Caprica, that are slated to feature complex main characters in same-sex relationships.

As happy as I am about that as a member of the LGBT community with marked dork tendencies, it does make me wonder why it’s so hard to find nonstraight characters in science fiction.

I’m speaking mostly of movies and television, though even during my fairly voracious adolescent reading of sci fi and fantasy, I can only recall coming across one character that wasn’t straight – it was a minor character, from a planet that had four different genders, and was only mentioned in passing.

I later found some queer science fiction books, but it took an experienced guide and some hacking through the underbrush. And even then, these were “niche” science fiction books, marketed specifically – and only – at the LGBT community.

Why do there seem to be so few gay characters in mainstream science fiction books, and even fewer on screen?

After all, the genre is all about exploring the “what if” questions, and is ideal for exploring the potential ramifications of social issues. It seems like gay, lesbian, bi, trans, and intergender characters would offer rich areas for exploration.

I know that the LGBT community and the nerd community intersect by quite a bit. Why  are so many science fiction movies and shows aimed at a presumed audience of straight fanboys? And all too often homophobic ones at that?

It’s a shame that the bulk of the industry seems to accept and pander to the stereotype of the straight, male science fiction fan who is so insecure about his own sexuality that he’ll be threatened by anyone else’s. The original Star Trek explored love between different species but we still can’t see two guys kiss today?

It’s a shame that the TV and film industries aren’t more willing to give fans credit for being open minded and even more so if they’re deliberately catering to people’s bigotries.

We’re missing several opportunities here. The first is educating the young straight members of the science fiction audience, who with the help of some compelling LGBT characters could learn that we’re not so scary after all.

The second is the ability to reach members of the LGBT of the community who don’t have a support network. Just seeing good gay characters is helpful in itself, but with a little more attention to LGBT-friendly themes, science fiction movies and TV shows could carry some useful messages. Who among us hasn’t felt a little alien at some point?

Finally, more LGBT-friendly science fiction means more interesting shows and more fun for the entire viewing audience. Every good SF fan knows that it only gets better when there is more to explore.

Comic Dave Chappelle is right. Too much ink is wasted over the political yammering of the famous. If singing and dancing is your forte, that is what I require when you open your mouth. Your thoughts on the topic of the day not so much. Today that rule will be broken to announce that from now until I’m some slobbering dirty old man pinching the backside of an overworked nurse, I’ll be the first in line for any Hugh Jackman movie.

Rumors about the Aussie star’s sexuality have been up for public debate (please do me a favor: don’t leave notes about how your best friend’s third cousin is Jackman’s lovah or how your third cousin’s man saw him kissing someone at the Hangar). Why we care about his bed mate(s) is beyond me, but what do I know? Heck I even can’t stand Twitter.

But here is how Jackman responded when pressed to answer the gossip:

“I’d be happy to go and deny it, because I’m not,” Jackman said. “But by denying it, I’m saying there is something shameful about it, and there isn’t anything shameful. The questions about sexuality I find more here in America than anywhere else, because it’s a big hang-up and defines what people think about themselves and others. It’s not a big issue in Australia.”

While your third cousin’s mate will be annoyed by this, it made my day. Made me fall in love a little bit. In a purely platonic way. Wrecking homes is for nasty girls and my parents raised me to be a lady.

Jackman has a new movie coming out and although he doesn’t need my cash he’s getting it. I can’t think of a better guy to give it to (excluding me of course).

And now her wife Potria de Rossi has joined in. During an appearance on Jimmy Kimmel last week meant to promote her new show “Better Off Ted,” de Rossi never really got around to talking about her career. What she did get around to talking about was life with Ellen, traveling with Ellen, and introducing a farcical PSA that she shot, apologizing to Yes on Prop 8 protesters who were inconvenienced by her marriage to Ellen:

The PSA is short, but sharp, and certainly gets Portia’s point across. Here’s hoping she keeps up her vocal activism during the rest of her “Better off Ted” press tour.

I’ve been feeling pretty cynical of late. Obama forms council on women and girls? I was tempted to dismiss it as ceremonial. The administration indicates it will sign on to the UN Declaration calling for the decriminalization of homosexuality? Eh, what’s the actual impact of an inherently toothless declaration?

Real change, I’ve been considering, will only come when we’re able to change real minds and hearts.

It’s perhaps not entirely shocking, then, that my cynicism lifted briefly when I saw the clips of Ellen DeGeneres interviewing her wife Portia  de Rossi from Monday’s episode of The Ellen Degeneres Show. Ellen Tarlin at Slate wrote a post that partly explains why I feel so positive about Ellen’s interview:

“But what I am impressed by most is how forthright she is about her sexual orientation, despite the fact that she has a large, broad, national, daytime network audience that certainly must include more than just a few homophobes. And Ellen’s likability must do much to warm their hearts.

She routinely mentions her wife, Portia de Rossi, their recent marriage, and throws the details of their lives together into her jokes regularly.

Maybe I am naive, but I think this is how our country will finally change: When people who are anti-gay finally learn that someone they already know and love is gay, and they want every happiness for their loved one that they are entitled to. Or even better, when they are willing to let someone who they know is gay into their lives, despite their homosexuality.”

How many minds were changed after that interview aired? Maybe a few, but maybe none. How many minds are changed every year that Ellen spends hundreds of hours during hundreds of shows referencing her wife Portia, their wedding, their house, their pets? Countless.

I’m not sure the importance of Ellen being herself on national television every day can be overstated. The issue of gay marriage is, like a lot of issues important to the LGBT community, an emotional one for most Americans. People’s views are driven by fear, of course, but also by love.

Polls show time and again that the most important factor in predicting a person’s opinion on gay rights is if that person knows a gay person. That kind of personal interaction—which is really a feeling of investment—is more important than political affiliation, region, age, religion, or anything else.

In other words, no one wants to discriminate against the people they love.

For the millions of viewers who spend every afternoon inviting Ellen into their homes, her very matter-of-fact attitude toward her sexuality is immensely powerful and influential. The women and men that watch her show every day know about every aspect of her life, she’s as real to them as their friends or neighbors.  If they feel that connection with her, and are informed about the challenges she faces as a gay woman with unequal rights, they’ll be swayed. Slowly, perhaps, but eventually. After all, who could possibly vote to divorce Ellen?

So thanks, Ellen, for your courage, your commitment, and for sharing your beautiful family with the world.

[H/T Jezebel]

Melissa Etheridge brought the audience to its feet at the Democratic National Convention a few minutes ago. She sang a medley of songs that started with God Bless America, wove in Give Peace a Chance and Times, They Are a Changin’ until she exploded with Born in the USA.

People were singing, crying, cheering, and waving their arms. A proud moment for us all, when a lesbian can bring delegates from all over the country to its feet.

She was even more amazing than she was last night at HRC’s equality concert, when she ended the evening singing Scarecrow, waving goodbye as the crowd sang, love, love, love.

Q: I watch Shear Genius. I think many of the resulting hairstyles are quite attractive. So why is it that the hair of the stylists themselves, with the possible exception of Nicole and the bald guy, looks absolutely ridiculous? What gives? – Marcy, Omaha, NE

A: It’s totally bizarre, isn’t it? I mean, clearly these folks know how to make hair look good — most of them anyway. So what the hell is going on atop their heads? You don’t see the cooks on Top Chef out in the back yard eating worms or whipping up Oliver Twist-like gruel for themselves, do you?

“Beautician heal thyself.”

Clockwise from top left: Shear Genius 2’s Daniel, Dee, Matthew, Paulo

Here’s the Flying Monkey’s explanation. You know how when you go to a movie with an actor-friend, and you’re talking afterward, and all they seem to have noticed about the movie is the acting — particularly the parts where a character has a big, emotional scene, screaming or crying? (Many of the Monkey’s actor-friends don’t always understand that “less is more” — which may explain why many of the Monkey’s actor-friends are unemployed!)

Anyway, something like that is going on with the hairstylists of Shear Genius. But just because you can make your hair a tower of frosted pink spikes doesn’t mean you should. As with acting, a great hairstyle flatters the person precisely because it doesn’t call attention to itself.

Another possible explanation is that they’ve banished all mirrors from the Shear Genius dormitories.

Q: What’s up with the movie version of Memoirs of Hadrian? I read somewhere that Charlie Hunnam had been cast as Antinous, but isn’t he a little old? Oh, and will they de-gay this story too? – Ray, Venice Beach, CA

A: Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci weren’t gay — they were just artists who happened to like drawing the male form. Meanwhile, Alexander the Great and Abraham Lincoln were married — so they couldn’t possibly have been gay either, right?

But it is literally impossible to “de-gay” the story of the life of the Ancient Roman Emperor Hadrian who openly acknowledged his homosexuality at the time and who carried on a passionate, decade-long romance with the love of his life, a handsome young man named Antinous.

So how do you make an expensive period movie based on the classic 1951 French novel Memoirs of Hadrian, which makes all these things very clear? For many years, people tried in vain. But it seems that Excalibur (1981) director John Boorman might finally be succeeding. Antonio Banderas has reportedly been signed to play Hadrian and filming is slated to begin any day.

Charlie Hunnam (left) & Antonio Banderas

But will Charlie Hunnam (Nathan in the U.K. version of Queer as Folk) be playing Antinous, as the online edition of British newspaper The Observer recently reported?

“That was just a rumor,” Hunnam tells AfterElton.com. “I never read that script.”

Next Page! Project Runway gums up the gaydar! Plus, McGinley defends Wild Hogs.

Yesterday at the Television Critics Association summer press tour in Los Angeles, producers of NBC’s remake of the 1980s series Knight Rider were nonplussed when reporters asked them whether Sydney Tamiia Poitier’s character, FBI Agent Carrie Rivai, would still be lesbian, as was strongly implied in the two-hour television movie that aired in February. “We haven’t explored her sexuality at this point,” executive producer Gary Scott Thompson said at first.

Given the fact that Poitier’s character was introduced with a scene in which she says goodbye to an unnamed blond woman sleeping in her bed — which clearly suggests that Rivai had a sexual relationship with the woman — Thompson’s response indicated that Rivai’s sexual orientation may be revised in the prime-time series, which debuts Sept. 24 on NBC.

If she remains bisexual, Carrie Rivai will be one of only two lesbian/bisexual women of color on all of prime-time scripted television this fall. The other character is Dr. Callie Torres (Sara Ramirez) on ABC’s Grey’s Anatomy.

Gary Scott Thompson, who wrote the screenplays for The Fast and the Furious and 2 Fast 2 Furious, and has been an executive producer on Las Vegas, was brought on board after the two-hour movie version of Knight Rider was made in order to turn it into a television series. “I had nothing to do with the two-hour” movie, he explained, including the establishment of Agent Rivai’s apparent attraction to women.

“Gary really was given sort of carte blanche when we brought him on board, to not be limited by what had been done in the two-hour movie,” said executive producer Doug Liman (The Bourne Identity, Mr. & Mrs. Smith). “And having sat in the writers’ room with them, the stuff that he’s managed to come up with for … the first eight episodes are so imaginative. A question like that almost feels small,” he said, referring to the question about whether or not Rivai is still queer.

On the other hand, Poitier, who played Rivai in the two-hour TV movie and reprises the role in the prime-time series, did not seem confused about Rivai’s sexual orientation. “I like the fact that she had that in the movie,” she told reporters. “I thought it was interesting. That’s something that we don’t see that often on television.”

When asked how she felt about Rivai’s sexual orientation in the movie, Poitier said: “For somebody that grew up in my generation, it’s sort of like a non-issue. I kind of read it and went, ‘Oh, cool,’ whatever, and done, onto the next scene and how to prepare for that.”

Currently they are shooting the third episode of the series, and Rivai’s personal life has not yet been addressed. “It isn’t an issue because it hasn’t been related to any of the story lines that we’re doing,” said executive producer Dave Bartis, who spoke to AfterEllen.com after the press conference. Bartis also worked on the TV movie.

“I think eventually as the show unfolds you’ll start to see some of her personal life,” Poitier said to AfterEllen.com in an interview. In the early episodes of the series, which have not yet been made available for screening, producers say the emphasis has been on creating a team of characters that go on missions using KITT, the artificially intelligent car, and not on any of the characters’ personal lives.

“Hopefully it’s something that they will keep,” Poitier said of Rivai’s sexual orientation, but “I don’t know what their plans or their intentions are.”