Thirty years ago, prime-time television series often depicted homosexuals as suicidal or psychopaths. In an episode of Marcus Welby, M.D., the doctor tells a tormented patient to "win that fight" against his homosexual feelings. An episode of Police Woman centered on three lesbians who murdered the residents of a retirement home.

How things have changed. Last month the Bravo cable network presented the first episode of Boy Meets Boy, in which a gay bachelor chooses a potential partner from a field of 15 men, some of them straight.

That is followed by Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, in which a team of gay men with expertise in designer clothing, food and wine and the arts, save aesthetically challenged straight men from their own warped senses of fashion.

These shows join a growing prime-time roster of gay-themed programming (Queer as Folk on Showtime, Will and Grace on NBC) that reflects a major shift in attitudes about gay subjects. Several network and cable television executives said the Supreme Court's 6-3 decision in June, overruling a Texas sodomy law and legalizing gay sexual conduct, underlined what they already knew—that the nation's attitudes toward gays and lesbians are radically changing.

"Finally, television is catching up with society at large," said Max Mutchnick, the cocreator with David Kohan of Will and Grace. "These new gay shows are a reflection of what everyone sees now in their jobs, in their families, in their schools."

But the trend has come under attack. A. William Merrell, a vice president on the executive committee of the Southern Baptist Convention, said the new shows were a sign of the growing influence of gays in Hollywood. "I believe that the net effect is to forward an agenda making homosexuality appear first normal, and then desirable," he said.

In many ways the new shows are trying to capitalize on the popularity of Will and Grace, which was the third-most-watched sitcom on network television last season behind Friends and Everybody Loves Raymond, with an average weekly audience of 16.8 million people, according to Nielsen Media Research.

—Source: The New York Times.