25 reasons Queer as Folk is essential LGBTQIA+ viewing today

Queer as Folk (2000-2005). Photo Credit: Showtime

Realizing that your real family is your chosen family

Finally, there’s one major realization that many LGBTQIA+ people have about their family. If they don’t have an accepting parent like Debbie or Jennifer and get disowned, they realize that their chosen family, the friends they surround themselves with, are the ones who matter the most.

You’ll often hear the phrase “blood is thicker than water” used as an expression representing a close familial bond, that nothing can replace that. But for many queer people, that couldn’t be further from the truth. Their biological families disowned them, so they found acceptance in like-minded people, and you can’t break that bond.

On Queer as Folk, this couldn’t be more true, especially for Lindsay. Michael, Emmett, Brian, Ted, Melanie, Lindsay, and even Justin are like one big family, headed by matriarch Debbie. Lindsay’s own parents, though, never see eye to eye with her about her “lifestyle choice”. They don’t like Melanie, partially because she’s Jewish but mostly because she’s in a lesbian relationship with their daughter. They refuse to help pay for the couple’s wedding, despite paying for her sister’s many nuptials, because they don’t see it as a “real” wedding.

Lindsay tries very hard in season 2 to make them realize that she and Melanie are just like them, going to great lengths to organize a respectable dinner party for them. When they cancel last minute, then later show up to find out the dinner party has turned to a big gay drug-fueled party, that’s when Lindsay realizes they will never accept her, and she’s fine with that. If they won’t accept her as she is, she won’t accept them for how they are. She has her own family: Melanie, their son Gus, and their group of friends.