‘Queer as Folk’ Wasn’t Afraid to Critique the Culture That Led Us to Anti-LGBT+ Politics in 2023

In December 2000, Showtime released a series that took the world by storm. Based on the British series by Russell T. Davies, who went on to revive Doctor Who, the U.S. adaptation of Queer as Folk was created by Ron Cowen and Daniel Lipman’s Cowlip Productions, and even two decades ago was unafraid to get down and dirty with its explicit sex scenes and approach to taboo topics, which helped put Showtime on the map.

With the show’s fearlessness came a strong critique of anti-LGBT+ politics and a dedication to encompassing the highs and lows of being queer in America, all of which resulted in a television show that manages to be both timeless — and ahead of its time.

Queer as Folk follows the lives of five gay men in Pittsburgh: Brian Kinney (Gale Harold), Justin Taylor (Randy Harrison), Michael Novotny (Hal Sparks), Emmett Honeycutt (Peter Paige) and Ted Schmidt (Scott Lowell); along with their close lesbian friends, Lindsay Peterson (Thea Gill) and Melanie Marcus (Michelle Clunie). 

Over five seasons, Brian and Justin engaged in an on-and-off relationship that was challenged by their sizable age gap and gloomy worldviews, and the others navigated relationships and issues within their personal and professional lives. Sharon Gless also played a key role in the series as Michael’s PFLAG mother Debbie, who was a waitress at the diner the gang regularly frequented. While the series may sound wholesome enough, it is credited as the first show to depict sex between two men on American television and it covered several topics that were deemed controversial at the time, such as coming out, gay bashing, drug abuse, and the popularity of backrooms and bathhouses within the gay community, the latter of which came as a direct result of the policing of queer people. If you can’t be gay in public, you’re going to be gay behind closed doors — and Queer as Folk knew that.

When the show was released, members of the gay community were upset over some of its raunchy depictions. However, Cowen and Lipman have stood by their work, saying it resonated for those who didn’t have a “West Hollywood” or “Christopher Street” in their towns. Doubling down on their take, the show also spoofed a “good gay” show-within-a-show called Gay as Blazes. Through this, Queer as Folk continued to draw a clear image of the damage that comes with creating a hierarchy within the LGBT+ community and caving into demands that are perpetuated by anti-LGBT ideologies. In a Season 2 episode, Brian is offered a local citizen’s award for saving Justin’s life after a gay bashing incident at his high school, but the town’s more conservative gays want him to reject the honor to avoid drawing negative attention to the organization, given Brian’s man’s man reputation. In the end, Brian refuses to publicly reject the award, forcing the organization to honor him at the benefit — which he never shows up to.

The show was quick to critique the very culture that has led us to this current moment in United States politics, which has seen the egregious criminalization of LGBT acts – specifically within the transgender community – and other behaviors that are thought to be promiscuous, like abortions and LGBT+ inclusive sex education in schools.

Another example of the series being ahead of its time is when the final season of the show depicted the bombing of a gay nightclub — taking place over 10 years before the Pulse nightclub shooting in Florida. The aftermath shows Brian getting upset with a healthcare worker after he was denied the right to donate blood to save his lover, which parallels the events that occurred after the tragic, real-life event. The storyline was derived from the FDA’s antiquated ban against gay men making blood donations, which first began during the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s. The ban was recently lifted by the FDA in 2023; however, the organization still requires gay men to not have new or multiple partners within three months of donating. (It should be mentioned that the ban was loosened during the COVID-19 pandemic due to a shortage of blood donations, which further highlights its discriminatory nature.)

In a way, Queer as Folk is a big middle finger to the cowardice shown by businesses and people who hide their LGBT+ support out of fear of backlash from extremists. There’s a line that effortlessly captures the zeitgeist of the hate in our current political sphere, which has led to outright dangerous anti-LGBT+ laws being passed in Florida, Tennessee and Montana with states like Oklahoma to follow. “I used to hate it when Brian would say, ‘There are two kinds of straight people in this world — the ones who hate you to your face, and the ones who hate you behind your back,’ because I knew that wasn’t true, there are plenty of straight people who don’t hate us,” says one character during a time in the series when Pittsburgh was being targeted by conservative protestors. “But the ones who do no longer have to do it behind our backs, they can do it in the White House, in the churches, on television, in the streets.”

Looking back over twenty years later, maybe Queer as Folk left you craving one of Debbie’s famous lemon bars, or obsessing over the addictive chemistry between Justin and Brian, or perhaps haunted by the polarizing finale. But at a time like now, it is more important to remember how well the show captured a time in the past, as well as the present and, likely, the future. Cowlip’s series sparked a fierce revolution for queer representation on the small screen and remains a worthwhile revisit in 2023 — since, apparently, some things never change.