took long enough

(The article below is from The Boston Globe, def not by me)

Once upon a time, in the melodramatic environs of CBS's "As the World Turns," there was a boy named Luke and another boy named Noah, and they fell in love. They shared in self-discovery, made it through a trying time when Luke was paralyzed from the waist down, celebrated his miraculous recovery, and kissed onscreen. Twice.
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Then they stopped kissing. And some fans were happy. And some fans got very, very angry.

They point, these Luke-and-Noah champions, to two major near-misses since. Once, during an episode of the soap opera near Christmas, Luke and Noah moved toward a kiss, and the camera quickly panned to mistletoe. Then, on a very special Valentine's Day episode, every other couple on the show shared a kiss. Luke and Noah hugged.

One gay-themed website, afterelton.com, created a running ticker of the time that has elapsed since Luke and Noah since locked lips onscreen. (At press time, it was 157 days and running.) After the mistletoe episode, fans - who refer to the couple as "Nuke" - sent bags of Hershey's Kisses to CBS. More recently, they've launched a publicity drive, blitzing reporters with long, heartfelt statements of Luke-and-Noah support.

"We appreciate so much that the show is doing this," said George Hinds, 29, a youth employment counselor in Cambridge who helps run the fansite lukeandnoahfans.com, and praises the show for airing daytime TV's first gay kiss. "The campaign is really here to let them know we think it's time to move forward. We think America can handle it."

But for the show's producers, the Luke and Noah love story has proved to be sensitive terrain. "We're trying to make a show that appeals to our entire audience," said Jeannie Tharrington, a spokeswoman for Procter & Gamble Productions, which produces the 52-year-old CBS series - and has been fielding complaints and kudos from all sides since Luke and Noah first appeared.

The recent changes, she said, have come "because of some of the feedback that we've gotten, and because of what we thought was best for the show creatively."

Gay characters on television are common by now, both on cable and on network shows such as ABC's hit drama "Brothers and Sisters." And Luke and Noah, played by Van Hansis and Jake Silbermann, respectively, follow in a long tradition of daytime soap characters with coming-out stories; in 1993, Ryan Phillippe had an early role as a gay teen on ABC's "One Life to Live." In recent years, daytime talk show hosts Rosie O'Donnell and Ellen DeGeneres, both openly gay, have attracted broad fan bases.

But with their frank talk about love, their forthright conversations about when they'll first have sex, and their very occasional smooches, Luke and Noah represent something new in the soap opera world. "This was one more programming frontier," said Andy Towle, who runs the popular gay-theme blog towleroad.com and has kept readers up to date on Luke and Noah developments.

The story line began in late 2005, when Luke, the son of one of the show's longstanding couples, began the long process of coming out to his parents. Barbara Bloom, CBS's senior vice president for daytime TV, said the show's executive producer and head writer laid out a tentative long-term plotline in advance, unfolding it slowly so that the audience would conclude that Luke was gay before he officially announced it. From the start, she said, the writers hoped Luke would go on to become a central character, with everything that entails: "It's daytime television. It's the love story business."
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The coming-out saga garnered praise in the gay community and an award from the gay-rights group Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation. Hansis and the actress who plays his mother appeared in public service announcements on CBS.

And because the story line played so well with fans, Tharrington said, the writers eventually added Noah.

"Everyone in the town came to accept Luke as he was, and the viewers did, too," Tharrington said. "What we kept hearing from viewers is, 'We love Luke. We want him to have a love interest, too.' "

The "Nuke" story has drawn another GLAAD award nomination, and has attracted a new set of "As the World Turns" fans: gay men who now follow the show with a mix of activist pride and love-struck glee. Some watch Luke and Noah clips on YouTube, where an enterprising viewer has edited episodes down to the relevant scenes. Hinds said he has started to watch the soap in its entirety, "because I just wanted the show to be successful - to support the story line."

But Tharrington and CBS officials said they heard complaints from viewers opposed to the story line - though they won't say which side draws a bigger response. The American Family Association, a conservative group based in Tupelo, Miss., has received hundreds of complaints about the Luke-Noah romance - particularly their kisses, said Randy Sharp, the group's spokesman.

"It was a big turnoff for them," Sharp said. "The word 'repulsive' was used once or twice. 'Offensive' was used more than once. . . . It was overtly gratuitous. It's not necessary to the story line itself."

Sharp's group championed a boycott of Procter & Gamble in 2004, complaining about some of its gay-friendly corporate policies. This time, Sharp said, group leaders had a phone conference with Procter & Gamble officials, and asked members to contact the company.

"Our request to them was to do away with the homosexual characters," Sharp said. "Your writers can come up with good story lines that the general public would watch and not be offended by."

Indeed, Hinds says he wonders if the show's apparent solution - to keep suggesting kisses without showing them - is really pleasing anyone. "Conservative fans," he points out, "still see the intimacy."

Bloom, at CBS, says support for Luke and Noah has been unwavering. "We have never in any way asked them to censor that story or pull it back," she said.

And she said there are signs that, overall, the story has been good for "As the World Turns." Over the course of Luke's saga, Bloom said, the show has moved into a solid position as the third-rated soap across all networks.

But while both Bloom and Tharrington insist that Luke and Noah will remain, no one's making any promises on progress. Drawn-out love stories, Bloom points out, are a daytime drama staple.

"In the soap-opera business, you walk a very fine line between love stories, happily-ever-after, yearning, and obstacles," Bloom said. "The drama comes from the quest."

By Joanna Weiss
Globe Staff / March 1, 2008