It’s A Wonderful Gay Life: Are Straight People Jealous of Gays?
by Leah Waldron
On the second episode of “The New Normal,” Ryan Murphy’s new NBC sitcom about two gay men who hire a surrogate, David (Justin Bartha) is confronted by his basketball-playing straight friends (all doctors with kids), who tell him that a baby will ruin his perfect life. Nothing surprising there…just your usual “married guys playing basketball and complaining about chores and lack of sex life” sitcom fodder. But when David defends his decision, the guys take a different approach. They tell David that as straight men, they live vicariously through him—and his childless, wonderful, gay life.
I’m willing to bet that this entire basketball court scene, like most of “The New Normal,” would never happen in real life. First of all, the “let’s talk about our feelings” while we shoot hoops was super weird, not to mention that all doctors play golf on their day off, not basketball in the inner city (okay, maybe that’s a stereotype). But I couldn’t help wondering if straight men and women ever envy the gay life.