TV's gay spin zone.

For too many years when gay men and lesbians appeared on the nightly news, their lives were illustrated by woefully archaic film clips of seedy gay bars or seminaked parade revelers. Even through the late 1990s it used to amaze me that journalists could yammer about employment legislation or "don't ask, don't tell" while showing film clips of drag queens in hot pink beehive hairdos and spiked heels. For variety they could always pull out film of police hovering in protective rubber.

The press is lazy. I know. I used to be in television. Producers used old clips, "B roll" in the industry vernacular, and ran with it ad nauseam. Emphasis on nauseam.

But to and behold, after a particularly vicious cycle of video images surrounding headlines about gays in the military, hate crimes, the antigay Federal Marriage Amendment, and same-sex unions, television news has started to clean up its act. We are now getting glimpses of actual, identifiable gay men and lesbians saying sensible things into the camera or being filmed in the (gasp) sunlight.

In fact, during the past few years GLBT images have become more, dare I say, wholesome? News shows now show gay men burping babies, midlife lesbians in bridal lace, and five fabulous gentlemen giving grooming tips to disheveled straight guys. For a while, every time we turned on the tube we saw a gay and smiling Episcopal bishop. It was a religious experience.

Some gays make it especially easy for the media sloths. Our most, recent pride parades became bona fide wedding marches. Dykes on Bikes morphed into brides on rides. The largest, most flamboyant contingents included gay men with strollers and the Metropolitan Community Church. As for the police, they traded rubber gloves and billy clubs for rainbow flags waving from police car antennae.

But wait. Does all this gay multiplicity wreak havoc with our traditional and special gay culture? Our new TV image may, to borrow a well-worn phrase, "look like gay America," but does it now exclude the drag queen heroes and social renegades who gave rise to the Stonewall revolution? Have gay images been placed into a media food processor and come out as a Middle-American smoothie?

There's no question that this homogenized version of GLBT people is an image whose time has come. We exist in as ninny assorted, remarkable, dreary, wacko, and exhilarating subcultures as straight people. We've got our fringe, and they've got theirs. The only difference is that our fringe comes with lots of, well, fringe. And spangles. And leather. And softball players. And feathers.

While the very real images of everyday gays are critical to our upcoming legal battles for state-by-state equality, I hope they don't result in a disappearing act for our entire GLBT culture. As we fight for the right to marry, adopt, inherit, and achieve the equality we are due as Americans, we should make certain that our vibrant community keeps its celebrated options open.

After all, there are plenty of gay men and lesbians who don't want to marry, raise a family, buy a minivan, or be portrayed as average. And there are GLBT folks who do want those things but who also enjoy standing along a parade route cheering for buff disco bunnies and topless women on motorcycles.

We cannot marginalize the fabulous drag queens and brave bull dykes who not only wrote our history but forged our path--cajoling the rest of us out of the closet. We have to protect our in-alienable right to rebellion and our own special culture. It's our tradition, part of our heritage, and our roots.

So for all the progress, I still sometimes long to turn on the TV and see a grainy shot of a half-nekked gal with a Harley between her legs.

I hope the networks still humor us once in awhile.

Jacobs is author of As I Lay Frying: A Rehoboth Beach Memoir.