Yahoo Finance Family Guy character comes out as gay and marries his boyfriend
Family Guy character Bruce has come out as gay and married his boyfriend in the animated show's 19th season.
Until now Bruce, known for his "Oh no!" catchphrase, has always been utilised as a background character or as the butt of a joke – but he's finally been given his own episode.
The sixth instalment of season 19, 'Meg's Wedding', saw Meg struggle to find a date for the school dance. She then started dating Bruce, despite the Griffin family pointing out that he's "obviously gay".
With Bruce's anti-LGBTQ+ family pressuring him to settle down with a woman, he reluctantly agreed to get engaged to Meg. Eventually, Meg called off the wedding, before encouraging Bruce to come out as gay and to reconnect with the love of his life, Jeffrey.
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The episode concluded with Bruce and Jeffrey getting married in a Walgreen's carpark, with Peter Griffin officiating the wedding.
While the episode signals a progressive move for the show, it's repeatedly come under criticism in previous years for making jokes about the LGBTQ+ community.
However, in January last year, the show's executive producers Alec Sulkin and Rich Appel confirmed that the animation would be "phasing out" jokes about gay people.
"If you look at a show from 2005 or 2006 and put it side by side with a show from 2018 or 2019, they're going to have a few differences," said Sulkin told TV Line at the time.
"Some of the things we felt comfortable saying and joking about back then, we now understand is not acceptable.
"The climate is different, the culture is different and our views are different. They've been shaped by the reality around us, so I think the show has to shift and evolve in a lot of different ways."
Speaking to Digital Spy in late 2019, Patrick Warburton, who voices Joe Swanson on Family Guy, said: "If there is too much gay humour it becomes bullying and I don't like that, so it probably could do with phasing it out.
“The nature of the show is satire and it does seem to be an equal opportunity of slander across the line. If it is more specifically targeting one group more than others, I find it a bit bullying that way."
Family Guy airs on Fox in the US and ITV2 in the UK.
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