The 14 Gayest Moments In Pop Culture In 2014
It's been a hell of a year for gays in entertainment—from reality showmances to trans reality, on-screen sex to off-screen gay-baiting, and a whole bunch of coming outs. Before we turn off the lights on 2014, we're recounting the 14 gayest moments in pop culture.
14. Big Brother had a major bromance
Big Brother housemate Frankie Grande, half-brother of pop star Ariana Grande, engaged in a full-on showmance with straight housemate Zach Rance, one that even garnered its own nickname, "Zankie." Said Zach, "I’m not gay, but the bond Frankie and I have is so genuine and sincere that I truly feel that he is my boyfriend."
Frankie was happy to share the love, though, bromancing it up with Cody And Caleb as well.
13. America had a trans moment
The trans community saw visibility like never before in 2014 thanks, in large part, to Laverne Cox: The actress-activist was nominated for a Emmy for her role on Orange is the New Black, graced the cover of Time magazine, was named Glamour's Woman of the Year, appeared in the music video for John Legend's "You & I," lit up the Empire State Building, and produced Laverne Cox Presents: The T Word, a groundbreaking documentary that aired on MTV and Logo.
Meanwhile, Amazon Prime's Transparent broke new ground with Jeffrey Tambor as a dad transitioning into womanhood, and earned a Golden Globe nomination for its debut season.
On the style front trans model Lea T signed a contract with Redken hair color, supermodel Andreja Pejic came out as transgender, and Barneys used trans men and women in a high-end advertising campaign.
12. MTV was Faking It
This spring saw the arrival of MTV's Faking It, a new scripted series about two teens pretending to a be a lesbian couple to score popularity points. What really set the show apart, though, is when one of the girls realized she may not be faking it.
We also loved Liam and Shane, the best (and possibly only) straight-guy/gay-guy best friends on television. And Shane—a.k.a. breakout actor Michael J. Willett—actually got a sex life!
11. Hedwig stole Broadway's heart
A trans woman from East Germany became the belle of Broadway in 2014, when Neil Patrick Harris scored a Tony for his performance in Hedwig and The Angry Inch (and got introduced by RuPaul on the telecast.) Fans came back for more when Andrew Rannells, and then Michael C. Hall took over for NPH when he left the show.
And in 2015, John Cameron Mitchell, who wrote and originated the role, will once again take that wig down from the shelf.
10. Stars put a ring on it
With marriage equality spreading across America, several A-listers decided to tie the knot: Sara Gilbert married Linda Perry in March, and revealed she was pregnant six months later. Neil Patrick Harris and David Burtka married in Italy in September, right around the time Cheyenne Jackson married boyfriend Jason Landau
And just this past weekend Elton John and David Furnish married in England, and Lance Bass and Michael Turchin got hitched in Los Angeles.
On the small screen, Mitch and Cam finally got married on Modern Family, while Will Horton and Sonny Kiriakis made it legal on NBC’s Days of Our Lives, the first gay male couple to get married on daytime television.
Congrats to all the couples—our gifts are in the mail!
9. HBO got gay. (Well, gayer)
Expectations were high for The Normal Heart, HBO's adaptation of Larry Kramer’s fiery AIDS drama, and the network—and director Ryan Murphy—did not disappoint. It received multiple Emmy nominations, and won best Made for TV Movie. Murphy brought an ailing Kramer on stage with him during his acceptance speech.
And earlier in the year, HBO introduced us to Looking, a new series followingattractive (if not extremely diverse) San Francisco gays looking for love and happiness in the 21st century.
Everyone had an opinion about the show, which didn't shy away from sex (or sexy men—hello, Russell Tovey!) and earned Best New TV Series honors at the NewNowNext Awards.
We're eager to see what happens when Looking returns on January 11.
8. Country music came out
Nashville hasn't busted down its closet doors yet, but they're hanging by the hinges: In November Country singer Ty Herndon, who had hits with “What Mattered Most” and “Living in a Moment”, came out, telling People magazine he wanted young LGBT people to know, "“They can be loved by God, they can be married one day, they can have a family, they can give their parents grandkids. They’re not broken, they’re not sinners and they’re perfectly beautiful.”
Hours after Herndon's revelation, fellow country artist Billy Gilman came out on YouTube. Gilman, who charted at age 12 with the Grammy nominated "One Voice," thanked his fans and supportive country stars, but said he regretting working “in an industry, that is ashamed of me for being me.”
And "Follow Your Arrow," an equality anthem sung by Kacey Musgraves and co-written by out singer-songwriter Brandy Clark, won the 2014 CMA for Song of the Year.
7. The Grammys got married
“Same Love” quickly turned into an anthem supporting marriage equality, so when Macklemore and Ryan Lewis performed the song at the 2014 Grammys, they turned it into a moment to practice what they preached: Queen Latifah, ordained for the occasion, officiated over the weddings of 33 gay and straight couples, as Madonna and Mary Lambert sang the song's rousing chorus as well as the Material Girl classic "Open Your Heart."
“This is a love song, not for some of us but for all of us,” declared Latifah.
Lewis, whose sister was among the couples, called the ceremony “the ultimate statement of equality, that all the couples are entitled to the same exact thing.”
6. Ellen Page demonstrated her real super-powers
The Oscar-nominated star of Juno and X-Men: Days of Future Past came out as a lesbian in a moving speech at an LGBT youth conference in February. "I am tired of hiding and I am tired of lying by omission," she told the crowd. "I suffered for years because I was scared to be out. My spirit suffered, my mental health suffered and my relationships suffered."
Crediting the bravery of people like trans actress Laverne Cox and out football player Michael Sam, Page admitted the entertainment business can instill unrealistic standards.
“Not just young people, but everyone. Standards of beauty. Of a good life. Of success. Standards that, I hate to admit, have affected me,” she told the audience. I have been trying to push back, to be authentic, to follow my heart, but it can be hard.”
5. How to Get Away with Murder brought gay sex to broadcast TV
Shonda Rhimes was already an old pro at drama by the time HTGAWM graced our screens. But she dialed the gay heat up to 11, with with Annalise’s intern Connor (Jack Falahee) getting his groove on more than once in some seriously scorching scenes.
“I always tell the directors, I don’t want to see two men mashing their faces together. It’s not a wrestling match," said Murder writer writer Peter Nowalk. "I want it to feel like real kissing, like they’re actually kissing.”
In October, after a fan tweeted that "the gay scenes in scandal and how to get away with murder are too much. There is no point and they add nothing to the plot”
Rhimes quickly responded, “There are no GAY scenes. There are scenes with people in them.”
4. Gay-baiting celebrities played with our hearts
This was the year straight male celebrities made an all-out gambit for gay fans: Nick Jonas went shirtless at New York gay clubs, Tyler Posey revealed he had a Grindr profile, Zac Efron cuddled with Max Joseph and whipped out his manhood for the cast of Workaholics, and James Franco... well, we'd have to start a whole new list to catalog all the gay-baiting James Franco has done.
Adam Lambert, for one, questioned all the cock-teasing. "Anyone find it interesting how straight male Pop stars r pandering to gay audiences lately!? Should we be flattered? Progress or strategy?"
3. We lost Joan Rivers
There were plenty of celebrity deaths this year—Robin Williams, Lauren Bacall, Phillip Seymour Hoffman—but none hit us as a hard as the passing of Joan Rivers in September. Like many of us, Joan learned to how to use humor, gossip and even insults to lower people's defenses.
She was also an early ally of the LGBT community: She was a staunch AIDS activist years before every celebrity wore a red ribbon, she warmly invited drag queens onto her 1980s daytime talk show and, more recently, officiated over two same-sex weddings in New York.
Even months later, we can't believe she's gone. Rest in Peace, Joan.
2. Michael Sam had the best (and worst) year of his life
A former defensive end at the University of Missouri, Sam came out in February with hopes of becoming the first openly gay player in the NFL.
"I understand how big this is," he told ESPN. "It's a big deal. No one has done this before. And it's kind of a nervous process, but I know what I want to be ... I want to be a football player in the NFL."
Sam was drafted by the St. Louis Rams in the seventh round of the NFL draft, and even how he took the news—kissing his boyfriend on-camera—was met with media scrutiny.
Sam was eventually dropped by the Rams in the preseason, only to be picked up by the Dallas Cowboys for their practice squad. But when Dallas let him go in November, the 24-year-old began to wonder if he had made the right decision coming out.
"If I had it my way, I never would have done it the way I did— never would have told it the way I did,” Sam told GQ in November. “I would have done the same thing I did at Mizzou—which was to tell my team and my coaches and leave it at that. But the recruiters knew, and reporters knew, and they talked to each other, and it got out.”
Ultimately, he stood by his decision—in an interview with Oprah airing this week, Sam recalled:
The Draft was the longest three days of my life. I went upstairs and then I was thinking, should I have came out? Did I make the right choice of coming out and telling the world I was gay?
And then I’m looking outside, through the window, and I’m thinking that, and then I felt a hand all over my shoulder and that person was Vito. And in that moment I was like, I don’t care what happens. I made the right choice to come out.
We hope some team is smart enough to snatch up this MVP.
1. Sam Smith owned everything
Not only did singer-songwriter Sam Smith sell more than a million copies of In the Lonely Hour—and earn a NewNowNext Award and six Grammy nominations—he did it as an openly gay artist at the start of his career. And he did it singing about an unrequited crush on a straight man.
Smith, 22, had his reservations about being out, telling the Telegraph “Past gay artists, things have happened to them that haven’t been great."
But America, and the world, was ready for its first openly gay pop superstar: "All I can say is I’m so unbelievably surprised and happy at how far the world has come," Smith confessed, "because there have been no issues.”
