Finally! After 50 years there’s been a gay kiss in Star Trek

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After over half a century since it first aired, the iconic series Star Trek has finally shown a gay kiss.

The kiss was during the mid-season finale of Star Trek: Discovery, which has been streaming on Netflix since September.

You can watch the romantic moment here.

The kiss was between Lieutenant Paul Stamets, the ship’s top scientist, and Dr Hugh Culber, Discovery’s medical officer, who have had a blossoming romance throughout the season so far.

Stamets is played by Anthony Rapp, and Culber by Wilson Cruz, both of whom are openly gay actors.

The show has received criticism from homophobic fans, but Cruz came back with the best response.
“You can turn your TV off, sure, but you’ll only be cheating yourself. LGBTQ people aren’t going to just disappear because you put your head in the sand.”
“We share the planet with you. We have always been here. We will always be here. You just don’t want to see us. I’m happy to tell you we won’t be invisible anymore. Not for your comfort.”
Anthony Rapp has recently been in the news, after he accused actor Kevin Spacey of sexually assaulting him in 1986, after which Spacey came out of gay.

The Original Series, which first aired in 1966, made waves in the 60s by featuring an interracial kiss, between Kirk and Uhura.

However the often-groundbreaking show has been criticised in the past for its lack of LGBT+ representation.

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However the show has always had LGBT+ fans, with historians believing Kirk and Spock to be one of the first ‘slash’ pairings in fan culture.

They have made some steps in recent years. In Star Trek Beyond, the third in the movie franchise, Lieutenant Hikaru Sulu, played by John Cho, was shown as a married gay man. However a scene with the husband and child, and a kiss, was apparently removed from the final cut of the film.

Prominent LGBT+ activist George Takei, who played Sulu in the Original Series, criticised the move, calling it “a twisting of Gene’s creation,” referring to Gene Roddenberry, the shows original creator, though he later walked back the comments.

George Takei and John Cho (Photos by Michael Loccisano and Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images)

However Roddenberry had always intended for the show to push boundaries.

“By creating a new world with new rules, I could make statements about sex, religion, Vietnam, politics, and intercontinental missiles,” he said.

Roddenberry’s son said his father would have been “100 percent in favour” of making Sulu a gay character.
Takei has recently been accused of sexually assaulting a 23-year-old model in 1981, though he denies the allegation.He then had to apologise, for ‘joking,’ about the alleged assault.

Star Trek has also had prominent gay figures Patrick Stewart, and Zachary Quinto, star in reincarnations of the franchise, as Picard in The Next Generation, and Spock in the 2009 reboot film.

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