Peter Paige, who played Emmett
Honeycutt on Showtime's groundbreaking gay drama Queer as Folk,
says the gay teens on Fox's musical-comedy Glee are doing “a
lot of good.”
The bullying storyline playing out on
the second season of the hit show involves Chris Colfer, who plays
gay McKinley High student Kurt Hummel, and Max Adler's closeted
football player Dave Karofsky.
Darren Criss plays Blaine, an out and
proud student from a rival glee club named the Dalton Academy
Warblers, a mentor to Hummel – and
possible love interest.
After one shove too many, Hummel chases
down Karofsky into the men's locker room.
“Do not push me Hummel,” Karofsky
warns with a clenched fist.
“Hit me, because it's not going to
change who I am,” Hummel responds. “You can't punch the gay out
of me any more than I can punch the ignoramus out of you.”
Karofsky yells, “Get out of my face,”
and then, to the shock of millions, reaches in and kisses Hummel.
“I think it does a lot of good,”
Paige
told GregInHollywood.com's Greg Hernandez. “I think any time
we're getting into people's living rooms showing them complicated,
interesting, relevant portrayals of gay people, we're doing something
right. It matters.”
“Seeing Kurt stand up for himself, it
really is a beautiful thing,” the 41-year-old actor added.