It’s Time For More LGBTIQ Families On Australian TV

Think about Australian TV for a second. Make an image of all the different fictional families in your head. Are Karl and Susan Kennedy from Neighbours there with their various stowaway teens? The Rafters on Packed to the Rafters? The Proudmans on Offspring? What you probably don’t see is a family with same-sex parents.

On- and off-screen, it sometimes feels like rainbow families are invisible in Australia. Just listen to the remaining opponents of same-sex marriage and they’ll throw out the age-old argument: “what about the children?” It entirely dismisses the existence and validity of the rainbow families that already exist in Australia. Seriously Lyle Shelton: Senator and proud lesbian mum Penny Wong isn’t the only one sick of the ACL’s shit.

According to the 2011 census — the one that wasn’t a monumental fuck-up — there were 33,714 same-sex couples in the country and 12 percent of those couples had dependent or adult children living with them. In Australia, 11 percent of gay men and 33 percent of lesbians have children. Those aren’t huge numbers, but they’re higher than a decade earlier, and with mainstream Australian attitudes becoming more accepting of same-sex partnerships and adoption laws slowly changing for couples, this number will only continue to climb.

So why isn’t this progress translating into representation?

Australia Just Had Its First Comprehensive Study Of Diversity On TV; It Didn’t Go Well

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We’ve Got Some Catching Up To Do

After breaking ground in the ‘70s with Number 96 — the first show in the world to feature an openly gay character and the first time a gay couple were presented as normal people, fully accepted by community — Australian media has failed to keep up the momentum. Screen Australia recently released a landmark study in diversity on our screens; it found just 5 percent of main characters in our dramas are LGBTIQ. This is compared to 11 percent of the real-world population who identify as such.

It’s not all bad. Though there are no solid figures on what came before the study, that 5 percent is progress. There have been multiple longstanding gay characters as part of the extremely mainstream Neighbours and LGBTIQ characters are slowly popping up elsewhere too. Josh Thomas’s Please Like Me has gone on to international acclaim, while Barracuda, Wentworth and others are offering dynamic LGBTIQ characters. But in terms of representing rainbow families, we’ve got a long way to go.

One notable example (perhaps the only one) is Channel Nine’s House Husbands. The Logie Award-winning show featured a same-sex parented family, with gay couple Tom and Kane raising Kane’s niece. This, in 2012, was the first time a gay couple has been seen raising a child on an Australian TV show and it was treated with respect and avoided clichés. Unfortunately Tom, the character played by Tim Campbell, was then written out of the show.

“The producers have decided at the 11th hour that Tom won’t be returning,” said a disappointed Campbell after being axed from the show.

This is a role he had been particularly proud of. “What I liked about it was that you could easily substitute a heterosexual couple into the storyline and virtually have everything exactly the same. So that was something that really appealed to me,” Campbell had previously told TV Tonight.

In the show’s fourth season, Kane is making plans to become a father with new partner Alex and the use of surrogate — another ground-breaking move for Australian TV. The season ended with the wedding of Kane and Alex, but unfortunately their planned family will not be seen on-screen in the upcoming fifth season. Gyton Grantley, who plays Kane, has decided not to return to the show and Darren McMullan, who plays Alex, will not be required. It’s a huge blow for mainstream representation.

The Australian TV industry has a reputation for being insular and conservative at a high level; as Screen Australia’s study found, many networks consider diverse talent and stories “risky” in the search to attract broad audiences. Fortunately, there are more great local examples to draw from outside of TV.

Sophie Hyde’s 2014 film 52 Tuesdays is a heartfelt look at being a parent to a teenager while transitioning gender, raising questions around parental responsibility and the responsibly to be yourself. Last year, Maya Newell’s Gayby Baby gave a stunning glimpse into the real lives of rainbow families that got conservative commentators all hot and bothered. Unfortunately after a controversy from The Daily Telegraph and involvement from the state government, the film was successfully banned during school hours in NSW.

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Getting Our Representation Elsewhere

Australia isn’t the only country struggling with this. In 2015, of the 881 regular characters on broadcast primetime programming in the US, four percent were identified as gay, lesbian or bisexual, according to GLAAD’s 2015 Where We Are on TV Report. This is actually less than Australia’s five percent.

Although the US is seeing notable change on the issue. Those figures don’t, for instance, account for cable or streaming TV series where there is rising diversity of LGBTIQ and minority characters. There were 84 LGTQI characters on American cable networks in 2015, compared to 64 in the previous year. Trans characters get the most representation on streaming services.

Of course, turn on your TV and you’re bound to see The World’s Most Famous Rainbow Family — that of Mitch, Cam and their daughter Lilly, as a part of Modern Family.

Their family was born in the show’s first episode in 2009 with Mitch and Cam bringing Lily home from her native Vietnam. The homophobia that rainbow families can endure is implied by a passenger on the plane, but it’s not actually present. A woman says, “look at that baby with those cream puffs”, which Cam believes is a reference to him and Mitch. She is actually referring to the cream puffs Lily is eating. As with all Modern Family plots, it’s just one big misunderstanding.

Sure, their characters can veer into clichés and much has been written about their seeming lack of affection for one another — not just physically but emotionally too. But it’s on your screen multiple times a week and goes a long way to normalise same-sex parented families.

Before Modern Family, was the less idealised but no less important beginning of David and Keith’s family in Six Feet Under. As part of the final season of the HBO series in 2005, the funeral director and security guard decide to become foster parents. Taking in a pair of troubled brothers, the committed couple struggle through some very difficult times with the kids but are able to form a loving family.

This is important as foster care is one of — and in some states, the only — avenues LGBTIQ people have to building families. Foster care is not easy, but it is meaningful and important — something that is shown in Six Feet Under. David and Keith struggle with a complete lifestyle change and some very troubled kids, but through their support and stability these children are able to flourish.

I dare you not to cry during the finale when they’re all grown up supporting their foster dads at their eventual wedding.

Across the board, representation of rainbow families is slowly getting better and these stories are becoming less rare. In the multi Emmy Award-winning Transparent, same-sex parenting is seen as a non-issue. It presents the queer characters as flawed parents not because of their sexuality, but because they’re kind of shitty people.

Yes, this is the result of a lot of work that’s done over time, and the Australian industry is much smaller — but there is room for more and we should be doing better.

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Why This Matters

The first time I remember same-sex parents on television impacting me was in the fifth season of Skins in 2011. The androgynous Franky had been taken in by foster parents Geoff and Jeff (yeah, I know) who had met in the military. There was an age difference between the two men, and it felt like a real, lived-in relationship.

I was still coming to terms with my sexuality, and this was the first time I had been able to reconcile my being gay with my vision for the future. This was the first time my sexuality didn’t seem like an immovable roadblock to having a family. These men were working as a team to help raise a troubled teenager and that was something I could see as part of my narrative. Whether this ends up happening remains to be seen, but at least I know it’s an option.

For some, representation doesn’t matter, and that’s fair enough but it’s important to remember that representation can help build futures and validate people’s identities. If kids struggling with their sexuality can’t see themselves having a certain kind of future — one that’s readily available to their straight friends — they’re more likely to have mental health issues and feel worthy of less.

It’s vital that rainbow families are seen and heard because it reminds those against same-sex marriage that these families exist and they want the right to legalise their relationship just like straight parents do. Try arguing that same-sex marriage will harm children when you see beautiful rainbow families on your screen every night. Hopefully Lyle Shelton and his mates won’t just change the channel.

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Nick Adams is a Melbourne-based writer who writes about Really Good Parts of Songs and LGBTIQ issues. He tweets at @nickdms.