Disney recently aired an animated same-sex kiss—a first for the entertainment giant.
The popular cartoon Star vs. the Forces of Evil follows magical princess Star Butterfly who comes to Earth as an exchange student to protect herself from her own powers. During the scene in question, Star and Marcos Diaz, her closest friend, are spending quality time together at an N*Sync-esque concert when Star’s feelings for Marcos bubble up. As she sees other couples kissing during the song, she notices a gay couple in the crowd kissing. Then, in a following shot when Star disappears, several more gay couples can be seen together.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9n5ACBivlcg
While it’s not the show’s stars interlocked in a same-sex kiss, the Disney Channel has been gradually accepting LGBTQ couples for some time. As Glamour reports, Good Luck Charlie featured a lesbian at the center of one storyline, and Gravity Falls revealed that side characters Deputy Durand and Sheriff Blubs are actually in a relationship.
This isn’t the first time that a kiss has been a vehicle for representation, either. While Star vs. the Forces of Evil’s kiss might not be as iconic, the scene immediately draws parallels to Captain Kirk and Lieutenant Uhura’s 1968 kiss, the first scripted-for-television interracial kiss in U.S. TV history. At the time, NBC executives asked for two scenes to be recorded: one with the kiss, and one without. In order to make sure the kiss was broadcasted across the country, William Shatner and Nichelle Nichols purposefully botched film shoots that did not include the kiss.
As Disney continues to make their own advances for LGBTQ representation, fans hope that more queer kisses result.