Read this scene for me.

Finally tired of watching Bert glare sullenly in the direction fo the Starfleet people, Maria said, “It’s not their fault, you know.”

Bert turned that harsh glare upon Maria. “Isn’t it, Maria? Any one of them could have been the one to die. Why did it have to be Trip instead?”

“You tell me, Bert,” she said, trying to shift to a more conciliatory tone. “Look, I know you’re in pain. But here we are, among thousands of people who’ve come from all over the planet–a lot of them are even from other planets–to celebrate the arrival of the future.”

A future that just might make your family’s sacrifices worthwhile, she thought. She knew she couldn’t utter the thought aloud–at least, not yet.

Maria nodded, and gave Bert a gentle hug. She knew that the grieving process always took time, just as it had for Bert after Elizabeth Tucker died in the Xindi attack. And she understood that some wounds could tear the scabs right off all the other ones.

That was taken from The Good That Men Do. The only difference is that I changed Miguel’s gender–Miguel is now Maria.

Now, does anything in that really draw a lot of attention to the fact that, as a heterosexual couple, they’re, well, heterosexual? Is heterosexual sex a subtext to that scene? Does it make you stop and go, “Why did they give Bert a wife? Why couldn’t he just be single?”

Would you have even noticed the heterosexuality of the characters if it had been Bert and Maria rather than Bert and Miguel?

Quoting from you:

For instance, in the case of Bert–would a heterosexual brother have necessarily compelled the narrative to include mention of a spouse or signficant other as Trip’s brother would have been the only concern to the story?

Almost certainly! Can you really imagine a man mourning the death of his brother or other close family member without sharing it with his spouse or significant other? I cannot. I wouldn’t blink for two seconds if the scene had had Bert sharing his grief with his wife–I would consider that a completely natural piece of characterization. Heck, the scene that introduces Bert and his husband itself comes almost immediately after a scene in which Trip’s father shares his grief with his mother.

I don’t think anything about the scene between Bert and Miguel in any way interrupted the narrative or drew a disproportionate amount of attention to their being LGBT individuals. It drew as much attention to Bert and Miguel being gay as the previous scene with Charles Tucker Sr. and his wife did to their being heterosexual individuals. It wasn’t even about the fact that they were gay, but about Bert’s misdirected anger over Trip’s apparent death.

With respect, sir, I would suggest that it stuck out to you not because there was anything ungraceful about its presence in the narrative, but because you are used to heteronominative narratives in which there is no homosexuality–homosexuality is invisible. And so when a narrative is not composed in a manner as to make homosexuality invisible — when a narrative constructs homosexuality as existing and being just as visible and important as heterosexuality — it sticks out more to you.

And, while your citation of the Spartans is plausible for a Klingon model, I would still question the introduction of the LGBT characters without some other groundwork suggesting this possibility.

Why? There’s nothing in the canon that precludes it at all, and we know that in real life, homosexuality does occur among warrior cults. There’s no reason to not to have gay and lesbian Klingons–especially since, for all we know, their culture may consider homosexuality completely unremarkable.

And, perhaps, my biggest obstacle is that every novel I have read by Mangels/Martin has felt compelled to include LGBT characters–that suggest some agenda besides trying to portray the possible 7-10% of a population as a “natural” part of the narrative backdrop.

Well, first off, I would point out to you that plenty of other LGBT characters have been introduced by numerous other writers. Bart in Corps of Engineers, for instance, or T’Prynn and Anna from Star Trek: Vanguard by David Mack, Dayton Ward, and Kevin Dillmore.

Secondly: Is there an agenda? Yes, there is. There’s a pro-diversity agenda. That agenda means that the writers of TrekLit are pro-gay, and pro-African-American, and pro-women, and pro-men, and pro-European, and pro-African, and pro-Asian, and pro-Jewish, and pro-Muslim, and pro-Christian, and pro-Atheist, and pro-straight, and pro-bi, and pro-alien!

Infinite Diversity In Infinite Combinations. It’s the same philosophy Gene Roddenberry had when he did TOS. I mean, at that time — and even today — African-Americans only constituted around 10%-15% of the US population — not much larger a percentage than LGBT individuals. Yet that didn’t stop Gene from putting an African-American woman on the bridge, whose race was almost never commented upon. She was just there. So was Sulu, so was M’Benga. And so are the LGBT characters we find in TrekLit.

As far as I’m concerned, the inclusion of LGBT characters in TrekLit is perfectly appropriate, and I don’t think any of it has in any way been unnatural. I never once felt that the narrative stopped and said, “HEY, BY THE WAY, THESE CHARACTERS ARE GAY! SAY HI, BIG GAY BERT!”

#71 probably reflects what I have been trying to articulate–the LGBT characters thus far have seemed a little more forced because sexual orientation does not normally contribute to a narrative unless we are watching Kirk ogle the girl-in-space-of-the-week so he can save the universe again

Actually, it does. It’s just that we don’t tend to think of everything related to heterosexuality as being sexual. A scene between a married man and woman doesn’t register to most straights as being sexual, because we just take it for granted that people are straight. Yet the fact that those characters are heterosexual is an essential element to those characters and their relationship. For example, with Trip’s parents, an essential element of their characterization is that they are heterosexual, married, and have had sex. Hell, the fact that they have had heterosexual sex defines those characters, since they are to the narrative, first and foremost, the parents of Trip Tucker.

But, like I said, we’re used to it, so we don’t think of it as being sexual (even though it is). So when we see Bert and Miguel, it registers–not because the scene draws any more attention to their sexuality and the fact that they have had sex than it did with Trip’s parents, but because it’s not heteronominative. We pay more attention to a homosexual couple because we do not usually see homosexual couples in fiction produced in American culture (or, at least, did not until the last twenty years or so), and therefore we are much more aware of their sexual orientations and of its implications (i.e., that they have had sex). It actually doesn’t draw any more attention to those implications than a scene between a straight couple, but, again, we’re not used to it, so we’re more conscious of it.

Again, even though I might be less inclined to want such characters included in what I read, I recognize that culturally (present or future) they might appear in the narrative and would I would be okay with it if I didn’t sense they were put there for the sake of some agenda.

I’m not trying to be mean to you, but you may need to just accept that TrekLit, like Star Trek in general, has a pro-diversity and pro-equality agenda and always has. For better or for worse, that has always been a part of Star Trek; including LGBT characters is just its logical extension.

I must acknowledge that my own personal views might be causing me to react more strongly to the LGBT characters when they appear. However, I would suggest that activist elements in our own society have created an environment of suspicion toward the way these characters have been inserted.

For instance, in the case of Bert–would a heterosexual brother have necessarily compelled the narrative to include mention of a spouse or signficant other as Trip’s brother would have been the only concern to the story? And, while your citation of the Spartans is plausible for a Klingon model, I would still question the introduction of the LGBT characters without some other groundwork suggesting this possibility. And, perhaps, my biggest obstacle is that every novel I have read by Mangels/Martin has felt compelled to include LGBT characters–that suggest some agenda besides trying to portray the possible 7-10% of a population as a “natural” part of the narrative backdrop.

#71 probably reflects what I have been trying to articulate–the LGBT characters thus far have seemed a little more forced because sexual orientation does not normally contribute to a narrative unless we are watching Kirk ogle the girl-in-space-of-the-week so he can save the universe again (or is an essential part of the narrative such as Ursula LeGuin’s “The Left Hand of Darkness”).

Again, even though I might be less inclined to want such characters included in what I read, I recognize that culturally (present or future) they might appear in the narrative and would I would be okay with it if I didn’t sense they were put there for the sake of some agenda.

#70 I do appreciate your comments because they have challenged me to think (and continue thinking) about both my personal response to the LGBT characters and what is narratively acceptable in a story. Perhaps Mangals/Martin could (or have) weigh in on the reasons for these characters and how they wrestle (or not) with the decision when and how to include them.

(well i dont need to remind you) but…
do you remember the line they fed us before the episode aired?

“We know. Trust us, we know”

I was not in any way offended, but a minor character usually gets a pretty quick treatment (almost like an NPC in an RPG). Those characters did feel a little wedged in, because the story is not progressed by their orientation any more than the story was progressed by Archer being hetero. We found out in the series Archer was straight in stories where the romantic interest was part of the tale. No, I am not saying LGBT characters shouldn’t be there unless the story needs them to be specifically gay, but I’m not sure it was a narrative where orientation would have come up. When you have an African American character, it’s not necessary to say “hey look, a Black guy.”

It would however be very interesting to see a story regarding homosexuality in the Klingon culture. 70- you have some good questions on that. Maybe future novels could explore that, and it BE part of the story.