In 2005, a cable channel called Logo was launched, focusing almost exclusively on LGBTQ+ content. It featured shows that carried themes and discussed concerns related to homosexuality and the issues they faced at the time. Dramas, biographies, reality television, and more could be found on that channel, and if you were into the LGBTQ+ niche of entertainment, it was the channel for you. RuPaul's Drag Race, for instance, was first birthed on that channel.
But around 2012, the network shifted to be a bit less niche, and it began including more generalized content. The age of the internet plagued Logo, and viewers were more apt to find their LGBT entertainment elsewhere, like Netflix and other streaming services. The shift didn't save it, and by 2017, the network stopped producing original content and became a rerun channel. While the channel is still around, it's become more like an archive for sitcoms than the leader in niche programming for the LGBTQ+ community. Most homes in America can't even get it anymore.
But its collapse was not the internet's fault entirely. Logo's audience was just too niche. Despite all the hoopla about LGBTQ+ representation being needed, there weren't enough viewers to keep Logo as a contender in the entertainment market. Cable is dying, but it isn't dead. Fox News still draws millions, and ESPN might be shrinking, but its viewership is still pretty massive. HGTV and the Hallmark Channel are still contenders in the age of the internet.
These channels have audiences. Logo did not. Too few people truly cared about LGBTQ+ content, including a solid chunk of the LGBTQ+ community.
But the ideologues that infiltrated the entertainment space didn't take the lesson from Logo lying down. In their minds, being niche wasn't the solution to "acceptance"; they wanted to shove the square peg that is LGBTQ+ messaging into every round hole they could find. If a brand or a franchise was popular, then it needed to be "reimagined." Characters needed to be restructured, plotlines needed to be refigured, and messaging needed to come before plot.
Read: The Five Goals of the Left's Cultural Thievery
Next thing you knew, LGBTQ+ messaging that sat comfortably on Logo was now being shoved in your face next to the likes of Galadriel and Doctor Who. Booting up a video game may very well result in you getting hit in the eyeballs with a character you know and love waving the rainbow flag. You know that universe with the superheroes? The characters aren't just dealing with cosmic-level threats anymore. They're also contending with bigotry and confusing feelings about their sexuality.
Fast-forward to the end of 2025, and the seventh episode of Stranger Things is released. For all intents and purposes, it's a brilliant show with a plot that kept millions and millions of people tuning in for years. Even when the show was awful during the second season, it maintained a fanbase that was more than ready to tune in to see the story unfold. This includes yours, truly.
It was around season three that LGBTQ+ creep began encroaching on the show. As I reported in my previous article about Stranger Things, the homosexual elements began taking up too much screentime and made no difference to the plot. A show about a massive interdimensional mystery from the perspective of the residents of a small town was an incredible concept to explore, but detours to make room for homosexual plotlines to unfold made it feel like the show was the guy slamming its brakes while in the fast lane on a highway.
Read: The Problems With Stranger Things' Fifth Season Could've Easily Been Avoided
But with episode seven, the issue went from highly annoying to unbearable. As the overly large cast is readying itself to go to war with a being of immense power to stop it from smashing a foreign dimension into ours through a high-stakes gamble, the show stops for ten minutes to have a scene for one of the main characters to come out as gay.
The excuse is that it was necessary so that the big bad guy can't use the character's fears of being found out as homosexual against him, and it's effectively suggested that the world will literally be saved by the acceptance of homosexuality. Funny enough, as important as the writers of the show say this moment is, and for all the work they said they put into crafting it, you can fast-forward through the scene, and it makes absolutely no difference to the plot. The entire homosexual subplot for this character was wholly unnecessary and felt shoe-horned in for no other reason than to push a message.
If you look back at my writing about cultural issues here at RedState, you'll know I've been tired of this intrusion by the LGBTQ+ activist community into entertainment for years now, but I think this scene alone finally broke me. I've gone from highly annoyed to utterly exhausted. Stranger Things went from a groundbreaking show of epic writing and the example of how to do it, and effectively became a Logo show.
And I'm not alone. Take to X right now, and you'll find everyone else is over it as well. In fact, this episode of Stranger Things is the lowest-rated in the show's history, surpassing the season two episode that sent the plot off on a useless tangent with DEI characters being introduced.
Will coming out as a homosexual is now officially the lowest rated episode in the Stranger Things series. pic.twitter.com/XHZR5BAHZ7
— Severus Chud (@SeverusChud) December 28, 2025
I don't think I can stomach any more LGBTQ+ nonsense in entertainment, and while I'm definitely not alone in this regard, the ideologues will not learn the lesson the public is clearly trying to teach them.
They will see the reaction and conclude that the reason this episode was so disliked was that bigotry still infects the general population to an astounding degree, and the only way to truly help the LGBTQ+ community find acceptance is to put it into popular media more. Normalization will become the battle cry, and the ruination of once great brands and franchises will be the result.
This is, of course, not the answer. This will only backfire and more, and more people will get to the point where they can't stomach LGBTQ+ intrusions into things, but that's kind of the point. The more the ideologues can claim victimhood, the more moral currency they think they'll have, and the more they can effectively force their way into places they don't belong through cultural pressure.
This can't go on forever, though. As Logo proved, the market's not there for LGBTQ+ content, and the more they force it on the people, the less the people will watch. No amount of moral currency is going to keep a thing afloat if it doesn't produce actual currency. Since, like me, people are now throwing up their hands and giving up on the industry, the days of forced inclusion are numbered. It's just a question of when, not if.
