Gays in Star Trek – why no gay love in the Star Trek universe?

I was going to write a bit today about Star Trek and how disappointed I’ve always been that there has never been a gay character as part of the crew. This is of particular annoyance because science fiction should be the realm of openness and possible futures in which humanity gets some brains and things like sexuality are no longer an issue.

After a little bit of research however I realized far more informed people out there were already doing a fantastic job of documenting the issue of gays in science fiction and in some major detail. So instead of adding yet another mouthpiece to what others are doing a spectacular job at, I thought instead I’d give some of those people a shout out , because I didn’t know their sites or articles existed until today and you might not know about them either.

We’ve got Star Trek gay character site info, for sites that look at this ongoing issue. Kudos to them.

Gay, Lesbian & Bisexual Star Trek:
Gay, Lesbian & Bisexual Characters on Star Trek is an amazing site by David Sinclair that covers what he terms the “12-year saga of deceit, lies, excuses and broken promises”. Loads of information. Sadly it hasn’t been updated since 2003 by the looks of it, so news about the upcoming Star Trek film isn’t there. Hopefully the new movie might spur David to update as it’s a cool site.

Gay Base Alpha:
This is essentially a yahoo group for gay sci fi fans. It was specifically set up for fans of “Space:1999, it will also serve as a meeting place in cyberspace to discuss all issues affecting its members, including legislation, human rights, love, relationships or any other topics which its members would like to discuss with each other”.

Sexuality in Star Trek (Wikipedia):
Yes Wikipedia, font of all knowledge (even if it’s wrong sometimes) has a section dedicated to sexuality in Star Trek. It’s broken up into the various series as wel as fiction and even video games. Informative stuff.

Gay Trek (via Salon):
A nice article from Salon.com that discusses the issue of the lack of gay characters in Star Trek. This was written in 2001 and ends with a very good point. Even if gay characters appeared in Star Trek then, part f the depth of meaning is lost, because others had already done it. This is even more true now with shows like The L Word breaking that taboo in a major way.