While watching last night's episode of Family Guy just now (thanks to TiVo), I was pleasantly surprised to see a Chili's commercial featuring Esera Tuaolo, the former NFL athlete currently focusing on a musical career, who came out publicly as gay last year. It wasn't long ago that athletes who were gay--or even presumed gay--were seen as liabilities, and were very unlikely to receive commercial endorsement contracts. And in Chili's we have, like Wal-Mart, an institution that historically has been seen as appealing to the American middle-class mainstream demonstrating--explicitly in Wal-Mart's case and at least implicitly in Chili's--a wider acceptance of the gay community.
What a wonderfully queer week this has been.
