User:FatherX/sandbox

The contemporary lesbian and gay community has a growing and complex place in the American & Western European media. Lesbians and gay men are often portrayed inaccurately in television, films, and other media. The gay community's presence in the media has been evolving throughout the years. For the many years that media has become a part of our average life, the homosexual community has been seen as not only a mentally unsound lot of people, to comedic punchlines used for the enjoyment of the straight audience. Like other minority groups, these caricatures are intended to ridicule this marginalized group. [10]

Those viewpoints quickly changed when the AID's epidemic was becoming a reality to first world countries, especially in the United States. At the time, there wasn't much information on the disease, but what was known about this disease was that one of the ways it can be contracted is from having gay sex. We know today there are a lot of ways to contract AID's, but during the early 80's people got on the band wagon talking about how this is the "Gay plague." Preachers would go on live television to talk about how this is nature's punishment on the homosexuals. It was a contradictory time for the media because even though there were slander pieces on the community, like New York Post's pieces on this plague. Even though it's a reactionary newspaper, many homophobic and slanted headlines were on the front pages of their newspaper, enraging the already underrepresented and misunderstood community.