Few Are Shocked By Gay Kissing

YouGov has just published a survey showing how people feel about seeing others kissing on TV. I know – it's not exactly the question we were all asking, but never mind says Guardian's Richard Smith...

Interviewees were asked to picture this scenario: "A British soap opera recently included a scene where two gay men were shown lying in bed together, with no tops on, and bedclothes pulled up to their chests. The two characters also shared a brief kiss."

The pollsters then asked people whether they thought this was acceptable before the 9pm watershed, only after the watershed, or "not acceptable at any time". People were also asked how they felt about exactly the same televisual scenario, but featuring a man and a woman (perhaps unmarried?), a married (heterosexual) couple and two "gay women". Nationwide, 37% thought two men kissing was acceptable before the watershed, 39% only after the watershed, and 16% thought it was always – always! – unacceptable.


Compare and contrast this with results for the fine upstanding married couple kissing: 58% thought that was OK pre-watershed, 31% post, 5% never.

This wasn't a scenario that YouGov had plucked from the ether. Their question was a direct lift of a line from an article in the Daily Mail back in June, headlined: "EastEnders sparks uproar with gay bedroom scene before the watershed."

Of course there hadn't really been any great uproar. Such "outrage" is almost always manufactured by the press, as was this. A mere 125 people had complained to the BBC about a programme that attracts 10 million viewers – hardly a sign that many are really bothered about "this sort of thing" any more.

More interestingly though, the YouGov survey broke down its findings by political affiliation, gender, age, class and region, which gave a fascinating insight into the contours of homophobia in Britain today.

As might be expected, people are more tolerant of homosexuality the younger they are. More than half of all people under 40 thought it was all fine before the watershed, while 29% of people over 60 thought a gay male kiss was never acceptable. Which, by my (admittedly dodgy) maths suggests the least controversial place to show gay same-sexing would be the children's CBBC channel.

Tory voters were the most uncomfortable with the whole gay kiss thing (18%), but then 5% of Conservatives didn't even approve of straight kissing outside marriage. It's nice to have standards, don't you think?

The most accepting and least hypocritical voters were Lib Dems: a level-headed 60% were comfortable with any gender-variant of kissing before the watershed.

Curiously, Labour voters were the only ones out of all the categories who found gay male kissing more acceptable than lesbian kissing – they may have to convene a focus group to explain that one.

And yes, women were more relaxed about seeing a man-on-man kiss than men were – but only slightly. Just as predictably, men seemed rather more enthusiastic about the thought of lesbians locking lips.

The great same-sex kissing-on-TV debate was kicked off last May with another story in the Daily Mail: "'Indecent' lesbian kiss scenes face watershed crackdown". Naturally, the Mail illustrated this non-story with a photo … of two lesbians kissing.

The Mail claimed: "A review launched with the backing of David Cameron is expected to recommend that sexually suggestive scenes currently allowed before the 9pm watershed – such as the famous lesbian embrace on soap opera Brookside – should not be shown until later in the evening."

But when the Bailey Review was published a month later it made no such recommendations and its authors admirably emphasised that all sexualities should be treated equally.

This non-existent, unproposed gay/lesbian TV kiss ban became one of the tabloids' recurring riffs over this summer's silly season, despite everyone involved pointing out that the story was complete nonsense on a stick.

In the YouGov survey, the "gay women" kissing question threw up some surprising statistics. Most brilliantly, among those aged 18-24 it appears lesbian kisses are the most acceptable of all (68%), while married couples kissing are the least acceptable (49%). Kids today, eh? Verily, there's is a world turned upside down.

Scotland appeared to be the least tolerant region surveyed – only 28% approved of showing a gay male kiss before the watershed, against a British average of 37%. But Scottish people were the least likely to disapprove of gay kissing full-stop.

And – take note – fancy cosmopolitan London was the second least accepting of pre-watershed gay kissing, while that supposed bastion of unreconstructed masculinity, "the north", was the most accepting of manly gayishness by far (46% okayed it before the watershed).

I'm not too sure what any of this means beyond, in the immortal words of Lee "Scratch" Perry: "People funny, boy."

Me? I've long been arguing for a ban on humans being shown doing anything at all on the tellybox, lest anyone has to explain to the kids where they all come from. Won't somebody please think of the children!