The Importance of Being Omar

I have been watching The Wire lately and it dawned on me that Omar is a television anomaly-- in a good way. He is nominally a "bad guy," as much as a show like The Wire has "bad guys." Sides on The Wire are more like A and B rather than anything much resembling light and darkness or good and evil. Still, Omar is on the streets and in The Game. He has a certain Robin Hood-esque moral code, but he also has a trench coat and a shotgun. He's a scary badass! And he has sexual relationships with men.

I think the existence of Omar sends a good message to and for the LGBTQ community. A person's sexual preference doesn't necessarily have a whole lot to do with any other part of their personality or lifestyle.

Omar is an example of the kind of man that typically would not be thought of as gay. And then he can go and kiss another man more tenderly and believably than any other man kissing a man than I can recall ever watching on T.V.

I applaud the writers and creators of The Wire for writing multidimensional characters that are more than just examples of traits like sexual preference. It is modeling a constructive mindset for the rest of us-- If they're not hung up about it, we shouldn't be either.

Disclaimer?
I have also noticed lately that a lot of writing about LGBTQ issues is written by gay people (note Sunday's New York Times Magazine).
So I wonder if some might think it is weird for me, a predominantly heterosexual female, to be writing and thinking about the realistic portrayal of gay people as natural characters in a story about something other than their homosexuality.

Perhaps this is weird for some people. Like those of older generations or who live in the middle of this country. It brings me back to my theory that information moves outward in concentric circles or ripples. Ideas, like acceptance of web 2.0 or homosexuals, seem so completely normal or old news to a small group of people. But there is a group of people outside of that circle to whom the idea is still new, strange, and possibly frightening. Those of us in the circle can hardly believe that those outside of it have not yet adopted our way of thinking.

The range of viewpoints amazes me. But if my theory holds, widespread acceptance of other people's sexuality, be it gay, straight, or anywhere in the middle, is only as far away as the time it takes for that circle of information to expand.