Were there any Gay characters on Smallville

[Kyogre]

I am curious If there were any gay characters on Smallville, It would have been great during the high-school phase of Smallville if there was a student being harassed because of this and Clark and co. standing up for him/her, It sends a great message.

Tina Greer doesn't count because she was bat-**** insane.

[Nimkong]

In the comics Maggie sawyer was a lesbian but they never said she was on Smallville.

[Arbar]

Not including Tina Greer, there was the football player in Truth who wanted to take 'Fitz' to the prom, a Daily Planet worker Clark gave tickets to who said his boyfriend would be thrilled, and the woman in Combat who was flirting with undercover Lois at the wrestling ring. These are the only conrete canon examples I can remember, sadly.

[DJ Doena]

Is it really a wonder why? Except for Martha and Jonathan and up until Clois and Chlollie this show was all about totally dysfunctional relationships.

They could have gone with Pete as the token gay but that would be just one more character pining after Clark and he was the token black already.

And if they had gone with Chloe as the closet lesbian the show would be acused of ripping one more plotline off of Buffy.

The problem is that TV shows very rarely manage to show gay men and have them not behave like flamboyant caricatures instead of being just regular guys who happen to love other guys.

The more the show progressed the more was Clark surrounded by (albeit strong) female characters. In the end, Oliver was Clark's only male buddy on the show.

So having a man who behaves more girlish than the un-girlish female characters certainly wouldn't have helped.

[Arbar]

They did still manage to show a terrible stereotype (the 'murderous lesbian' was sadly very common in stories at one point) with Tina Greer - so in a way I'm relieved they didn't manage to be any more offensive after that.


I wouldn't have minded accusations of ripping off Buffy though....seeing as they got those already! A female romantic interest for Chloe could have worked in that case....but again, the Smallville writers probably would have ruined it somehow.

I'm still hopeful for the day that writers manage to portray *people* who are gay/straight/bi/trans, and not stereotypes, but it's slow-going!

[DJ Doena]

They did still manage to show a terrible stereotype (the 'murderous lesbian' was sadly very common in stories at one point) with Tina Greer - so in a way I'm relieved they didn't manage to be any more offensive after that.

Of all the meteor freaks shown, there were only three that didn't go homicidal: Kyle Tippet, Maddie Van Horn & Chloe. So statistical probability dictates that of all the murderous meteor freaks there are bound to be homosexuals among them.

I mean the show has never shied away from putting their foot into every single chliché there is. The younger brother of the Tool Time Taylor's was an over-over-achiever who'd literally kill to get a 4.0 average. The older TTT was steroid-inhaling jock and Mr. Not Nice Guy who wanted to get a baseball scholarship.

Then there are Sean Kelvin, Cassandra Carver, Desiree Atkins & Linda Lake whose very names pointed to their special power.

Subtlety thy name is Sledge Hammer.

[Arbar]

True - but the other stereotypes aren't as loaded as issues of race, gender and sexuality are, so I was willing to overlook their lack of sublety there. There were plenty of reoccurring characters that could have been gay without having to be like Tina - thinking about people who had romances in the show, there's Nell for example. Or even to use your suggestions of non-maniac mutants, Kyle and Bob could have been a couple (actually scratch that....since they did try to kill each other, and Lyle suceeded...well, that could have been re-written slightly)

[BlueRanger]

The famous or rather infamous Tina Greer

[liana]

Does Alan Scott count?

DC's having him come out as gay now. However, at the time when he appeared on Smallville, he was a straight guy, with a gay son in the comics. Either way could be the case, in Smallville's universe.

Well, they didn't reveal anything about his background in SV, so he can be either gay or not. But then again, in SV he was an older guy, from the same generation as Hawkman. The new Alan Scott is a young man, so he doesn't fit with SV verse. They can always use Obsidian in this universe, if BQM wants to go there.

As for Tina Greer, she wasn't originally a gay character. When she was introduced, she was straight but with an obsession with becoming Lana, and taking over what she considered to be "Lana's perfect life". But when she returned, they decided to turn her obsession of "becoming Lana" to actually "being in love with Lana". It was a bad move because it sent the message that as the character became insaner, it also became gay in the process, in another words homosexuality = insanity. I really don't know what AlMiles were smoking back then.

So, I guess what made it worse wasn't that she was gay and the insane, but the fact that she only became gay AFTER she became insane. Before that, and even in the beginning of her insanity she was straight, as we saw when she visibly enjoyed making out heavily with Whitney.

[BoyScout-ManOfTomorrow]

Neither Aquaman (Mera, hello!) or Victor (had a girlfriend) were gay but I remember a gay moment or two from them in S6's episode Justice.

[Raistlin]

^^^ A gay moment? Seriously?

[ForzaItalia]

I remember in the Season 3 episode ‘Truth’ (in which Chloe got the power to make everyone around her tell the truth), Chloe asked one boy who he’d most like to go to the prom with - and he mentioned a boy who was standing next to him.

[Dani-El]

There were a few more .
Tina Greer
Doug (the boy who wants to take Fitz to the prom)
Athena (the lesbian woman in Combat)
Colin (a man in Cure who said to be "scoring big points" with his boyfriend when he got the concert tickets from Jimmy)
+ the man in Echo who was interviewed by Lois and Clark, talking bout an accident though he had seen nothing just to get attention. I dont remember exactly, but I think Clark read in his mind, that he was happy to be interviewed by such a handsome guy.

[Freawaru]

As for Tina Greer, she wasn't originally a gay character. When she was introduced, she was straight but with an obsession with becoming Lana, and taking over what she considered to be "Lana's perfect life". But when she returned, they decided to turn her obsession of "becoming Lana" to actually "being in love with Lana". It was a bad move because it sent the message that as the character became insaner, it also became gay in the process, in another words homosexuality = insanity. I really don't know what AlMiles were smoking back then.

So, I guess what made it worse wasn't that she was gay and the insane, but the fact that she only became gay AFTER she became insane. Before that, and even in the beginning of her insanity she was straight, as we saw when she visibly enjoyed making out heavily with Whitney.

Tina never was gay. She was a shapeshifter and to be with Lana (again) she shifted into a male form. She was straight the whole time.

[Arbar]

Doesn't that imply that Tina no longer was Tina whenever she shapeshifted - that she became a 'straight male' if she transformed her outer appearance? Because I would say that they portrayed her as gay (in a terrible, horrible way, as you said Liana. What were they thinking!) by showing her wanting to be 'with' Lana. There were definitey signs that she was attracted to her, versus how she behaved in X-Ray, where she wanted to get rid of Lana to *be* her instead.




Y'know, although there were very few canon GBLT characters, it does strike me that Smallville was one of the most homoerotic shows around. There's a lot of subtext even just in the treatment of Clark's secret. It's a pretty good source for Media Studies students