Game Show First: Gays on 'The Newlywed Game' 'Star Trek' Star and Partner as First Gay Couple

abcnews.com ^ | 10/13/09 | SARAH SARGENTI

[Sleeping Freeper]

Old show, new era: the first gay couple will compete on "The Newlywed Game" today on the Game Show Network.

Actor George Takei and his partner Brad Altman talk about the landmark episode.George Takei -- who played Mr. Sulu on "Star Trek" -- and his partner, Brad Altman, will be the first gay contestants on the show that has been on and off TV since its primetime premiere on ABC in 1967.

The game show, currently hosted by singer Carnie Wilson, has newly married couples compete against each other in a series of question rounds to determine how well the spouses know, or don't know, each other.

George Takei on Shatner Feud When longtime host Bob Eubanks presided during the show's earlier days, he always teased and tested couples about how well they knew each other, with questions about "making whoopee."

"I grew up watching the show in the 1970s where Bob would talk about 'making whoopee' and now Carnie Wilson just asks how often you have sex," Altman said. "It shows how much our culture has changed."

[a fool in paradise]

Boycott ABCDisney. They are pushing this crud down our throats and in our faces.

The love that dare not speak its name has become the love that won’t shut up.

[Kakaze]

...and people wonder why I watch re -runs of "My Three Sons"

We have lost ourselves as a culture.

The problem maybe.....or is we as a nation are so young we have not formed a real moral compass.......grieves me.

[dfwgator]

[texaschick]

Altman said. “It shows how much our culture has changed.”

Yeah, that’s what bothers me.

[maeng]

Watch almost no tv at all. I won’t be taken in by their trash. I have better things to do.

[a fool in paradise]

Which one will be having the bachelor party?

[KarlInOhio]

Isn't the idea of the Newlywed Game is to take couples who haven't been together long and don't know everything about each other and ask them questions to see if they match?

Altman and Takei have been a couple for a long time but finally found somewhere where they could call it marriage. Ignoring the homosexual part of it, it would be like a couple who have had a common law marriage for twenty years, but who finally went before a priest or a judge and made it official show up on the show.

[Puppage]

Outstanding!

[mkjessup]

No jokes about launching a probe, please.

[a fool in paradise]

They have have members of same sex couples on and are still going to call it “whoopi”?

But that’s not sex sex, just ask Bill Clinton.

[a fool in paradise]

Takei is in his 70s. This isn’t marriage, it’s estate planning.

Speaking of which, how much of Ted Kennedy's estate went to taxes?

[RushIsMyTeddyBear]

You owe me a keyboard FOR SURE this time.

[reagan_fanatic]

[EyeGuy]

“There IS STILL a Newlywed game???? I am SO BEHIND...”

####

So am I, and proud of it.

When it comes to current American pop “culture”, being out of the loop is cause for celebration.

Congratulations.

[mkjessup]

Where the most unusual place you have made whoopee?

Funny you should bring up that question. I still laugh myself silly when I see a re-run of Bob Eubanks asking that question on an episode of the original show and this poor gal (yes she was blonde) answered Bob with a perfectly straight face, "in my a$$?!?"

I thought Eubanks was going to keel over in cardiac arrest from laughter.

[a fool in paradise]

The networks and their writers have been inserting this agenda on every program they air.

There is a reason, tis the season...

Disney's Rich Ross: Hollywood's first openly gay studio chairman (Los Angeles Times October 6, 2009 Patrick Goldstein)

[Free State Four]

We aren't really good at plugging ???
You really blew away the competition ????
First bang of the day ???

[Awestruck]

“It shows how much our culture has changed.”

yeah, for the worse.....our society is continuing straight down the tubes...and decency has gone down the memory hole...ooooo there’s s double entendre there somewheres...lol.

[discostu]

It would probably have something to do with the fact that Shatner spent so many year mispronouncing Takei’s last name in so many venues that most people pronounce it the Shatner way (tack-eye) rather than the right way (ta-kay).

[goodnesswins]

Actually, I shoulda put a sarc tag on my statement....I could CARE less about “popular” TV....sheesh!