George Takei didn't publicly come out as a gay man until 2005, but the actor-activist revealed recently that, years earlier, he asked Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry why there were no gay characters on the show.

"I did very privately bring up the issue of gays and lesbians," Takei revealed. "And he was certainly, as a sophisticated man, mindful of that. But he [explained how], in one episode we had a biracial kiss—Captain Kirk and Uhura had a kiss—[and] that show was literally blacked out in the South — Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia didn’t air that, [and] our ratings plummeted."

The episode, "Plato’s Stepchildren," aired in 1968 and has incorrectly been called the first interracial kiss on television. (In fact,the first kiss between a white man and black woman occurred on an episode of Emergency: Ward 10 in 1964.)

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But the Star Trek kiss still had a huge impact—and not all of it positive.

"It was the lowest-rated episode that we had. And [Roddenberry] said, 'I’m treading a fine tight wire here. I’m dealing with issues of the time. I’m dealing with the civil rights movement, the Vietnam War, the Cold War, and I need to be able to make that statement by staying on the air.”

Roddenberry told Takei, “If I dealt with that issue I wouldn’t be able to deal with any issue because I would be canceled.'"

He had a point: As much as we wish otherwise, we can't always dictate the speed of progress. But Roddenberry died in 1991, and there have been numerous Star Trek shows and films in the decades since. So why have there still been no LGBT characters in any official Trek production?

What, there are no gay people in the future?

h/t: Gay Star News