Any gay characters?

[Timon the great]

[quote="Troll Berserker"][quote="Timon the great"]Why would anyone consider any of these characters to be gay? It's a preschool show for heaven's sake. Disney hasn't even jumped the bandwagon in putting controversial things on their media.[/quote]
They included gay couple in Zootopia (and possibly one more character that is gay) and a lesbian couple in finding Dory, but they were all cameos (as for the "gay" character, his real sexuality was never confirmed).

I doubt there will be any primary gay character anytime soon, especially in show meant for preschoolers. They don't even include regular romance yet.[/quote]

I don't think those ones you were mentioning have been confirmed by those films' creators. I know about the assumptions that were being made about those two woman characters in Finding Dory that had a child with them. But those two could just as easily be only best friends. Especially considering the film was made in Pixar. With Zootopia, I didn't notice any hinting of that as far as I remember when I saw the movie in theaters.

I'm not a supporter or beliver of any LGBTQ type stuff, and never have/will be and also because of my faith in Christianity. But I do agree though that portraying romance stuff, even hetero in a preschool show wouldn't really be appropriate. Then again, I've already seen a nice deal of artists on deviantart who have already paired Kion with Fuli or even Jasiri and some people there still complain about such hetero interspecies relationships/couples or that "the circle of life will be broken", lol.

So yeah.

[Gaze]

yeah, Disney doesn't seem to be making any strides at all in terms of queer representation in their media, and unfortunately I strongly doubt The Lion Guard will be the series to change that. this show's treatment of its female characters is evidence enough that it's not a particularly progressive series, to say the least.

of course, I wish that wouldn't be the case! I strongly disagree that LGBT+ characters in childrens' media is an inappropriate concept. children have LGBT+ adults in their lives. I can speak from my own experience, and from the experience of a number of friends and acquaintances, that many of us had a knowledge of our gender identities and/or gender preferences as children - so a cartoon character having an innocent same-sex crush or not quite feeling in touch with their assigned-at-birth sex isn't even an unrealistic thing to portray. but clearly our society isn't ready for that and would perceive it as wildly inappropriate, or maybe as the media trying to force an "agenda" upon children. hate to break it to ya, but your kid could turn out gay or trans or anything else whether or not they see a TV show that teaches them what those words mean! LOL.

as for the maned lioness or maneless lion idea, that would definitely be cool, but seems more fitting for teaching about intersex people (which is another thing mainstream parents would just die of horror if they saw in a kids' show!) or gender nonconformity than trans identities, I think. again, I have no reason whatsoever to believe that TLG would ever tackle that sort of topic because it just is not a very 'progressive' show. but it's a cool idea to dream about and might be neat for fan art or fanfiction.

I think Timon and Pumbaa seem more like a romantic couple in TLG than they ever have before. too bad they had to have Bunga call them his "uncles" to nip that idea right in the bud. still seems like they are possibly intended to be read as gay, but personally the only reason I don't really like that idea is just because Timon is so damn mean to Pumbaa most of the time. not a very healthy relationship, lol.

well, even if it will never be canon, there's always headcanons, right? I think it's very cute to imagine that Tiifu and Zuri have little childhood crushes on one another!

[moonsugar33]

I briefly touched on this elsewhere, but I think Jasiri and her sister Madoa could have made a neat couple (if they weren't sisters, of course)- just two hyena gal pals minding their own business and looking out for each other and their pups.

[it means no worries]

I wouldn't mind if any of the characters were LGBT, but I don't see why TV shows should have a token minority group member just for the point of affirmative action (which is seemingly happening more often these days). Affirmative action (for any group)for TV is an odd idea in my opinion-I just think it should be colour-blind and based on merit only, instead of forcing several cast decisions for the sake of representation. (Again, I stress that this is against the principle of affirmative action, NOT LGBT in particular.)

[Elton John]

There doesn't need to be a gay character, but gay animals - hell, gay lions do exist. It's not going to happen because this is Disney Jr.

And isn't affirmative action about filling up quotas? Having a gay couple wouldn't instantly mean AA.

[it means no worries]

[quote="The Lionvengers"]And isn't affirmative action about filling up quotas? Having a gay couple wouldn't instantly mean AA.[/quote]

It is-And in many different industries there are racial and sexual quotas being filled.
And no, you're right-It wouldn't necessarily be AA, but the current trend in show business and other industries/organisations would suggest it probably would be.

[Elton John]

Even if it was AA, what's so wrong with showing different aspects of nature?

*I don't see AA as a completely bad thing. It can get out of hand, but in a show that's about diversity like tlg it really wouldn't be AA.

[Squeely]

Shoehorning in LGBT characters is a bad idea, as it then becomes easy to screw it up and turn it into something offensive. A recent example is that unicorn episode from the new Powerpuff Girls. The creators came out and said the episode was about trans people, but the episode was problematic in many ways when taken in that context. I'm not sure if the writers were grossly unaware of how to positively portray transfolk, or if the episode wasn't intended to have anything to do with them, and they just said it did after the fact. So, from that aspect, I can see why throwing something LGBT in for the sake of having something LGBT could end up bad. I'm not against diversity at all, being non-binary trans myself, but it has to be done right.

It's a sensitive topic that ideally should be covered by those who are LGBT themselves. I'm very wary of TLG covering such a topic when they already dropped the ball somewhat on women with Tiifu and Zuri. Granted, such a thing could end up fine, I'd just hate for TLG to rely on any harmful stereotypes and whatnot. Probably best to just avoid the topic and stick to simple adventure stories.

[it means no worries]

[quote="The Lionvengers"]Even if it was AA, what's so wrong with showing different aspects of nature?

*I don't see AA as a completely bad thing. It can get out of hand, but in a show that's about diversity like tlg it really wouldn't be AA.[/quote]

You're right, sorry. My post turned more into a general rant about AA rather than focusing specifically on the question at hand.

[Marizzle]

[quote="Squeely"]Shoehorning in LGBT characters is a bad idea, as it then becomes easy to screw it up and turn it into something offensive. A recent example is that unicorn episode from the new Powerpuff Girls. The creators came out and said the episode was about trans people, but the episode was problematic in many ways when taken in that context. I'm not sure if the writers were grossly unaware of how to positively portray transfolk, or if the episode wasn't intended to have anything to do with them, and they just said it did after the fact. So, from that aspect, I can see why throwing something LGBT in for the sake of having something LGBT could end up bad. I'm not against diversity at all, being non-binary trans myself, but it has to be done right.

It's a sensitive topic that ideally should be covered by those who are LGBT themselves. I'm very wary of TLG covering such a topic when they already dropped the ball somewhat on women with Tiifu and Zuri. Granted, such a thing could end up fine, I'd just hate for TLG to rely on any harmful stereotypes and whatnot. Probably best to just avoid the topic and stick to simple adventure stories.[/quote]
I completely agree with you. Although I believe it is important to have representation in the media and that children should be aware of such topics (I don't mean LGBT, but romance in general), that representation isn't always done in the correct way. Most of the time, just like Squeely said, it's stereotyped, and, IMO, between not knowing and teaching children everything in an incorrect way, it's better to just leave things as they are.