10 Star Trek Scenes Even More Impressive When You Know The Truth

This season five episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation was first broadcast on 16 March 1992. In it, the Enterprise-D encounters a genderless race – the J’naii. Commander Riker must work with Soren, who is at first intrigued by human gender roles, and eventually admits that she identifies as female – a 'criminal perversion' on her world subject to 'psychotectic treatment' (read 'conversion,' or even 'aversion,' 'therapy'). The pair fall for each other and share a kiss on the planet, but Soren is arrested and brought before a tribunal. In spite of her impassioned plea that "I am not sick because I feel this way," she is sentenced to undergo 'treatment'.

Whilst the episode now feels more like a reflection on gender identity and transgender rights, it was intended as a discussion of homosexuality and discrimination based on sexual orientation. By this point, producers had received numerous letters criticising the non-inclusion of gay characters.

It may equally seem tepid by today’s standards, and Jonathan Frakes criticised the decision not to cast Soren as "more obviously male […] if they were trying to do what they call a gay episode," but the kiss, and the allegory of a bigoted society punishing a supposed 'deviance,' is more impressive when you know the bitter reality of the context of the time.

The first same-sex kiss on American network television was between two women on LA Law in 1991. It received numerous complaints and advertisers pulled their commercials. The first male same-sex kiss on a US network was only in 2000 on Dawson’s Creek. In the UK, the first gay kiss occurred in Eastenders in 1989. The brief peck caused uproar – MPs at the time wanted the soap to be "pulled from the air" for "promoting perverted practices".