“I always thought that what Russell T. Davies did in Doctor Who was extremely ground breaking in a slightly more subversive way than what it looked like. It never occurred to me that it was too on the nose, what he did brilliantly was introduce incidentally gay characters obviously as well as some more in your face ones. One of my favourite stories is Gridlock, there’s an elderly couple of ladies who are together and it just sort of passes by and that’s the way - softly, softly. That’s how the revolution happens as it were, you just become aware that people are incidentally gay.

I think when the day comes that you have a big detective show where the first half hour was this man at work and he’s a maverick and all the usual things and then we went home and his boyfriend says, “Are you alright?” it was just a thing, then something would have genuinely changed. I think the problem still is it becomes the issue. I think the thing with gay characters is that it has to be an issue as opposed to being part of everyday life, which of course we all know is what it is.”

first of all, take a deep breath.

remember that gay show that you’ve been watching for years? remember the hundreds of words of meta that you’ve read? remember martin freeman calling sherlock “the gayest love story in the history of television”? remember gatiss and moffat explaining how heavily influenced they were by TPLoSH? remember how TPLoSH’s screenwriter, billy wilder, has repeatedly said that he wished he’d gone further in making holmes and watson explicitly a couple? remember gatiss saying that TPLoSH changed his life because of the way the relationship between holmes and watson is treated?

remember how sherlock’s sexuality is mentioned constantly throughout the show? remember how involved gatiss and moffat have been in promoting LGBT+ causes? remember john’s face on the vitruvian man (and how there is no possible straight reading of that to be found)? remember how moffat and gatiss lie constantly and readily admit to that? remember how they recognize the importance of representation? remember all of rebekah’s videos? remember the creators talking about how s4 is groundbreaking? remember them saying how it will make television history?

none of that goes away because some trivial “journalist” decided to write an article colored completely by their own bias.