Just wondered if the Star Trek universe ever gave a nod to actor George Takei’sreal life sexuality in writing the Star Trek books?
He has a daughter and a grandson. (Demora Sulu and Akira Sulu.) Further, when he learned magic, he conjured a female companion up, not a male. Though that episode is depreciated.
Oh, my.
That said, in fandom, his orientation was pretty much an open secret for at least a decade before he went public.
The actor is gay, not the character. In a similar vein, Picard is not gay since Patrick Stewart played a gay man in a movie.
Do gay characters exist anywhere in the star trek universe? They seem to be completely absent from the any of the tv series. Any showing in the novels?
Presumably, the do in the TV shows, but we only know about the sexual orientation of a small selection of the various Enterprise crews.
In the alternate universe, in DS9, Kira is bisexual. I think Dax (the second one) is gay. Of course the story makes it seem like a symptom of their immorality, which is rather annoying.
The “any gay characters in Star Trek” thing was an issue for a long time. Roddenberry had apparently planned to add at least background extras in same-sex pairings but died before anything in that vein could be done. The producers of NextGen had a weaksauce episode about a member of an officially androgynous species developing feelings for Riker and starting to become definitely feminine, which led to him/her being institutionalized by his/her people to “correct” it. (“The Outcast”)
DS9 had an episode where the symbiont of the woman Dax was once married to in a former host arrives on the station for scientific studies in a new female host. Jadzia Dax and this new host/old symbiont become VERY friendly and I believe there’s a woman/woman kiss involved. But, again, it’s an alien species and it’s more the symbionts who are reacting to each other than the hosts.
This is one area in which Babylon 5 was definitely superior to the Star Trek franchise. There wasn’t a lot of overt same-sex sexin’, but there was a definite implied relationship between Ivanova and the telepath Talia Winter, and while infiltrating Mars, Marcus and the doctor posed as a honeymooning couple.
ETA: I’d forgotten about the Mirror Universe ones. Or I didn’t think they counted, since they’re part of the age-old “Of COURSE the bad guys can be gay/bi/wanton/immoral/sluts!”
This essay discusses it a bit:
Supposedly one of the supporting bridge characters from First Contact is supposed to be gay. I gather this must have come from a novel or some other source besides the movie itself.
No immediately available cite, but I remember reading that the character of Lt. Hawk (played by Neal McDonough) in First Contact was supposed to be the first openly gay character in Star Trek, but any scenes regarding his sexuality were either never filmed or wound up on the editing room floor.
That would be Lt. Hawk. The Ops officer who gets Borgified when he, Worf and Picard are blowing up the deflector dish. He is made into the cub for a Bajorian Bear in later books. the Bajoran also goes on to other relationships in later books, if I remember right.
But Picard sure likes singing showtunes.
Sulu liked to oil up his bare chest and prance around with a foil, but that would just make him British, not gay.
Yeah, I suspected George was gay for years. When he came out, my reaction was along the lines of, “Duuh.”
There are lots of gay actors who play straight characters. Always have been. Why should an actor being gay mean a character must be as well? Though the prancing with swords is certainly a…hint…
There is a fan based site, Star Trek: Phase II that make their own TOS era episodes.
There is one called “Blood and Fire” that has a male gay character (Kirk’s nephew), and some male on male kissing.
Obviously, not canon…
Having offspring is no indication of one’s sexual orientation. That being said there is nothing in canon to suggest Sulu was gay (I think some of the novels and on of the fan series outs him).
There was a TNG script that featured a male-male couple as a subplot (one was a redshirt) and the main plot involved some kind of alien virus that could only be treated with blood transfusions and for some reason Crusher was forced to resort to the “ancient practice” of using real donors instead of replicating blood.
For the scene in The Outcast where Guinan is explaining love to Soren there was supposed to be a same-sex couple in the background at one of the tables, but Rick Berman showed up on set to ensure this didn’t happen. He also wanted to change Guinan’s line from “When two people” to “When a man and a woman”, but Whoopi Goldberg refused to say the new line.
Jonathan Frakes has said that Soren (or at least some of the other J’naii) should’ve be played by men. Having all the J’naii played by women made it seem less like an allegory of homophobia and more like a planet of man-hating lesbians. Riker even had a line of dialogue where he’s arguing with the J’naii official after Soren’s conversion where he says “Then how is it that Soren has no choice about her sexual orientation?”.
When I watched The Voyage Home the other day, the scene where Sulu smiles and says, “Ah, San Francisco” took on a whole new meaning.
The scene is actually in the episode The Offspring, and Goldberg’s character is explaining love to Lal, Commander Data’s android daughter. And Berman didn’t try to change the line. The line as written was “when a man and woman are in love”, and Goldberg herself changed the line to “When two people are in love”. Also, regarding the same sex couple in the background, the original plan was just to have opposite sex couples in the background, but then when Goldberg changed the line, people came up with the idea of a same sex couple in the background as well. It was David Livingston, the director, not Rick Berman, who stopped this.
Generally I’ve noticed that Rick Berman has become the designated villain of Star Trek, whether he was actually responsible for the decision or not.
Capt. Kirk screwed anything that moved and didn’t stain the sofa. 
With inter-species mating, I don’t think gender mattered very much. 