By Andrés Rodríguez
very funny ones at that.
I was sitting next to my friend watching the “Modern Family” season finale. He’s in his 30s and he was crying. Mitch and Cam, the
gay couple from the ABC show had just gotten married to a television audience of 10 million. It’s a landmark television event, he
later told me, but at that moment he just masked his tears as he told
me not to look. “Do you realize how important this is?” he asked.
When “Modern Family” first came out in 2009, I was a little embarrassed of watching it with my family because it included a gay
couple, so I waited until everyone was out of the living room and
turned the TV on. I downloaded the pilot to my iPod that night and
watched it every night for about a month. That Lion-King-inspired
scene still cracks me up.
I didn’t realize it then, not entirely, so I shrugged and replied
something along the lines of: “Shut up, I grew up watching
‘Glee’.” I was coming off a week when everyone in the Internet
and their mother kept telling me how important this episode was to
be. They threw words around like “historic,” “significant,” “very
important.”
Yes, Mitch and Cam are often drawn out as stereotypes, sometimes
very gay, sometimes very butch. Yes, they can be clueless parents
at times and terrible at communicating with each other, but they’re
trying to make it work and their love is apparent. That’s what
keeps me coming back.
Most of the wedding planning went awry just as many “Modern
For me though, Mitch and Cam are more than this politicallyFamily” episodes do: there was a fire, a runaway bride and buttercharged poster child for the marriage equality movement in this
flies on the lose to say the least. At the end of the episode, Mitch
country. They’re Mitch and Cam, the imperfectly goofy, someand Cam kiss and everyone claps; they cut to the toast and then the
times uptight, but always loving gay parents that introduced me to newly-wedded husbands share a slow dance. Fitting for a series
this notion that gay men could share a “normal” life and be happy. that does intimate family moments so well.
I was used to seeing gays in television as promiscuous, capable of
settling down but unwilling, or as the victims of cruel bullying.
I realize the power these characters hold as stand ins for marriage
equality and I’m happy to see them tie the knot, but I also realize
I don’t mean to downplay the significance of these representations this is only a small victory. It’s a quiet little victory that felt right
of gay men in television, but Mitch and Cam were a breath of fresh to me because Mitch and Cam showed me just how normal, trite
air. They were just there. Not fighting the big fight just being each and beautiful a gay relationship can be.
other together and loving it, facing bumps along the way, some