If a picture says a thousand words, the GLBT community these days is doing a lot of talking.

Images of gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgenders are everywhere. Our marriages in San Francisco and Massachusetts have splashed photos of smiling, happy, well-adjusted gay and lesbian couples, often with supportive children in tow, across newspapers and broadcasts worldwide. Programs like The Center’s “Story Project” document first-person narratives with photos of GLBT families’ experiences, employing a creative strategy in the battle for marriage equality. (See Rachel Ralston’s article on the Story Project in this issue, page 14.) Projects like GLAAD’s new advertising campaign also seek to ramp up the offering of positive images of ourselves in the media. (See the story on GLAAD’s advertising contest, page 28.)

Such initiatives and news events like the recent marriages introduce not only our issues but also serve to introduce our very selves – real, close up and in the flesh – to the Midwestern suburban mothers who think they’ve never met someone gay.

Paving the way for this introduction to America has been the proliferation of GLBT cultural images – on television, in films and on theater stages. It’s hard to believe that it was only a few years ago, in the late 1990s, that we reported the first star in the title role of a television sitcom to be openly gay – that was Ellen, of course. Then came Will from “Will & Grace”, and the rest is history.

The last two years have seen another shift in GLBT imagery on TV. None of us are quite as fabulous as the one-dimensional Will, god bless ’em, who never mows the lawn, leaves dishes in the sink or runs around after a snotty-nosed kid. Neither can the majority of us work hair gel or wall hangings like the “Queer Eye” guys. TV writers have noticed this, and there’s clearly been a shift in recent series like “Six Feet Under” (which debuts its new season next week – watch for our feature in next week’s issue) and the UK-produced “Queer as Folk” to present multi-dimensional gays and lesbians with real-life complexities. They’ve even occasionally portrayed us (gasp) unsympathetically. Brian on “Queer as Folk” takes more drugs, parties more and obsesses about his appearance more than anyone we like.

And if GLBT audiences can’t get enough of ourselves on TV, just wait. Big news this week is the announcement that MTV Networks will launch its much-anticipated basic cable channel Logo, featuring GLBT programming 24/7 starting in February of 2005. A Viacom executive this week reported that the channel already has 40 original series and specials in development, with 20 in the pilot phase. Logo joins Q Television Network, which this week announced a soft launch of its daily-broadcast programming in July, PrideVision, currently available in Canada, and here! TV, a GLBT video-on-demand service that has 20 original series in the works.

That’s a lot of gay TV. But this week’s issue reminds us that, while for many of us TV is the defining cultural barometer, in fact GLBT lives and loves and dramas have for years been explored boldly on theater stages, thanks to innovative playwrights and directors who work in theater because they want to address the universal problems and meanings of all our lives in a setting that’s less ratings-minded and more art-minded. Our feature this week, starting on page 41, talks to theater artists on the cutting edge of gay culture.

What’s next in the imagery of the GLBT experience? Our feature writer, Brian Van de Mark, thinks he has an answer to that question: It’s exploring the transgender experience, an experience that we welcome into our community and which is largely unexplored by popular culture. In addition to having a chat with director Jack O’Brien who helmed last year’s Broadway gender-bender sensation Hairspray, Van de Mark caught up with playwright Doug Wright whose touching drama I Am My Own Wife explores the life of Charlotte von Mahlsdorf, a 1920s German figure who lived openly as a transvestite under Nazi Germany and later Communist regimes. We’re proud that Wright’s Tony-nominated drama was workshopped at San Diego’s La Jolla Playhouse.

So: Largely this week it’s good news when it comes to cultural images of GLBTs in the media – but let’s keep it all in context. Playwright Doug Wright is quoted in our feature as saying that it’s “very chilling” to think that while von Mahlsdorf faced the legalized discrimination of homosexuality under a fascist regime decades ago, that our own President would actually like to be able to write that same official discrimination into our nation’s Constitution today. It’s easy to forget – when we read about these issues in a political context – just how central these gestures are to people’s everyday lives. Plays like Wright’s – and the best of theater, film and television – give us a historical, human context to our everyday experiences. Sometimes the result is heartwarming. And other times it is, indeed, chilling.