Critics of liberation-through-visibility politics also note that increased media exposure does not ensure that the actual lives of gay men and lesbians are better. According to government statistics, hate crimes against gay men and lesbians are on the rise, even though Will and Grace continues to win Emmys. And Hilary Swank’s Oscar-winning star performance in Boys Don’t Cry certainly didn’t end violence against — or guarantee acceptance of — transgendered people.

The debate over the politics of visibility is laid out neatly by Suzanna Danuta Walters in her new book All the Rage: The Story of Gay Visibility in America (University of Chicago Press, 2001). But as fascinating as this discussion may be, with respect to Gay TV it is largely beside the point.

To understand what gay cable channels put at political stake for gay people, you have to begin with the recognition that, by and large, the US media are conceived and run by commercial interests that have little interest in making anyone’s life better. Television, along with the other arms of the entertainment industry, exists to make money. To that end, as media conglomeration proceeds at an unprecedented rate, programming has grown dangerously homogeneous. For gay liberation, the implications are alarming.

Sure, there’s a lot of talk about the "responsibility" of the media, and the important role they play in shaping opinion and keeping the public informed. But this is largely nonsense. Although there have been a few instances — the Pentagon Papers, Watergate, and, if we’re lucky, the ongoing and unfolding Enron scandal — when media have played the role of good citizens, these have been few and far between.

After September 11, there was a lot of talk about serious and sustained reconsideration of media priorities. The terrorist attacks were cast as a new-millennium wake-up call to an urgent sense of fresh responsibility. No more wallowing in scandals like the Bill-and-Monica affair, no more sleazy tabloid speculation about the whereabouts of Chandra Levy or the intricacies of Rudy G. and Donna Hanover’s divorce. But like the steam that still billows from the craters at Ground Zero, these sentiments vaporized before they could be properly realized. Winona Ryder’s shoplifting arrest and the collapse of Mariah Cary’s record deal have supplanted frisky and missing Washington interns, but otherwise nothing has changed. And of course the entertainment is not much better. The major networks’ magazine-format news shows are just this side of Entertainment Tonight, and Survivor is beginning to look like the show that deals with real people’s problems. The Roman emperors distracted and amused their unsettled populace with bread and circuses; we live in a world in which third-rate shows fight it out during sweeps week, and high-minded intentions are fed to the lions of marketing and publicity.

So why should we think that a gay television channel, or even several, will make life better for gay people? A gay television channel, be it on MTV or wherever, will embody the same mundane, commercialized, unflaggingly middle-of-the-road, non-controversial, tedious, and ultimately deadening vision of life — gay or straight — that we see on almost every other channel. If you have any doubts, just check out Canada’s favorably received PrideVision. Along with reruns of the British programs Queer As Folk and Two Fat Ladies and screenings of films like Nine to Five and Zorro, the Gay Blade, the channel features shows such as Locker Room ("A saucy comedy show offering a half-hour look at the world of sports from a brand new perspective. A really gay one! Locker Room bashes down the barriers between sports arenas and gay bars. Who knew they were so close?") and the interactive call-in show SoGay TV (which "cover[s] topics like fitness, relationships, clubs, culture, and typically feature[s] much naked male flesh, all with the help of experts and special guests. SoGay TV is geared to the urban, upwardly mobile, active gay male — an unapologetic ride that isn’t afraid of fun and debauchery.")

The bottom line is that the commercial media are driven by the bottom line and generally rely on the lowest possible standards. That is not going to change. Hey, you didn’t hear throngs of gay men and lesbians clamoring for a gay television channel. The whole thing was the idea of corporate-media marketing engineers. The New York Times’ report on MTV and Showtime’s decision to develop a gay-and-lesbian channel begins with a clear assessment of the motivating factors: "Looking to take advantage of what they say is a large and lucrative niche audience untapped by television programmers ..." And while the corporation promoting these ventures does not claim to be helping, or even to be interested in, the gay-and-lesbian community or its political struggles, always lurking in its rhetoric is the notion that the increased visibility afforded by gay television would "be good for the gays."

THE REALITY IS that gay cable-TV channels are going to represent corporate interests, not those of the community. Can you imagine the gay network giving any more time than do current network news shows to such non-mainstream groups as Queeruption, the Lesbian Avengers, groups focusing on gay people of color, or NAMBLA? Sure there will be coverage of the Human Rights Campaign, the Log Cabin Club, GLAAD, and Lambda Legal Defense — all of which get minimal coverage in the mainstream media now — but for the most part, the wide spectrum of gay community organizations and interests will be ignored, particularly if they don’t cater to acceptable mainstream sensibilities.

Or consider this: will the entertainment coverage on gay channels include queer avant-garde artists, writers, or performers? Will we see interviews with Dennis Cooper? The Five Lesbian Brothers? Or Jennifer Miller, the famous bearded lesbian who performs in circuses and in alternative venues?

Don’t bet on it. Like recycled Entertainment Tonight and E! TV fare, the bulk of gay television will focus on the new film where a noted Hollywood male celeb goes "gay for pay" or on those occasions when straight celebs show up for an AIDS benefit.

The idea of a gay-and-lesbian channel has become possible only because queer content on TV and other media outlets has increased tremendously over the past two decades. From the early days of the famous drag-queen episodes of All in the Family and the lesbian subplot on The Golden Girls to the far more central and explicit queerness of Will and Grace, gay and lesbian characters and themes have become something of a staple on network television. This development has been an indicator of real changes in mainstream American culture. Which raises the question: wouldn’t gay TV be redundant?

After all, if current gay programming were socio-politically ineffective altogether, why would the Christian right continually call for boycotts of gay-themed shows, holding them up as signs of moral decay? Christian conservatives, for all their wrong-headedness, do have their finger on the cultural pulse; these shows are on television because they are popular. But let us not forget that their popularity generates substantial revenue. Gay-themed programming is certainly not aired because the networks have a commitment to gay visibility or intend to engineer positive social change for gay people.

There is a terrible irony here. It is clear that an audience exists — with a gay-and-lesbian viewership at its core — to support gay-themed shows on network television. It is quite possible, however, that a gay cable-television channel would actually have an adverse effect on widespread visibility. It could, in fact, function as a drain to draw the gay-and-lesbian content out of network television and to re-ghettoize it. Why should networks continue with gay content if that core — and relatively small — audience is getting it elsewhere? In the end, the question about a gay cable-television channel is not how much it will help gay people, but how much it might hurt them.

Michael Bronski can be reached at mabronski@aol.com