'The Fosters' EP Reveals Which Storyline Got The Most Backlash

'The Fosters' EP Reveals Which Storyline Got The Most Backlash

Three years ago, The Fosters made history by featuring a kiss between Jude and Connor – it was actually the youngest same sex kiss on TV ever.

However, it was also the storyline that the show got the most backlash from too.

EP Peter Paige spoke with Advocate about the groundbreaking moment that is still talked about today.

“Jude’s coming out and particularly Jude’s first kiss…which was this beautiful, chaste, long-earned kiss with the boy who had been his best friend, who became his boyfriend— I was so invested in it,” he shared. “In a lot of ways it paralleled my own childhood, and my own story.”

He continues, “I was so invested in those characters, and it also felt earned, right, so natural and honest that I was shocked at the blowback. We got more blowback on that story than on probably anything we’ve ever done. We got more blowback on that story than on anything that happened in Queer as Folk [the breakthrough series on which Paige starred].”

He believes it was because of their age, which isn’t surprising, but he was.

“I had forgotten that there was this really false notion that gay people don’t turn gay until they’re adults,” Peter adds. “The kiss was more chaste than the kiss in My Girl. And nobody was running around screaming that the people who made that movie were pedophiles. Not only did the sick-o Internet trolls come for us, but some gay people came for us, too.”

“‘You’re making us look bad, you’re making us look like perverts,’” he recalls. “I was astounded. I went on HuffPost—they do a live show about gay issues…Even the host of that was like, ‘So, quite the scandal.’ And I was like, ‘Hi, can we not talk about it like that?’ The truth is, gay adults start out as gay kids. And we need to stop apologizing for that. We are doing gay youth and extraordinary injustice.”

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Gavin MacIntosh On The Jonnor Kiss & Relationship: ‘It Was Long Overdue’
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Photos: Freeform
Posted to: Gavin MacIntosh, Hayden Byerly, Television, The Fosters