When FOX's critically acclaimed but short-lived series Wonderfalls premiered in March, it included a lesbian character named Sharon (Katie Finneran), who met and quickly fell for bisexual Beth (Kari Matchett). Despite a multi-episode courtship, however, we never saw the women kiss because, according to show co-creator Bryan Fuller in an interview with AfterEllen.com last March, "the network’s standards and practices have told us that we cannot have them kiss on-screen."

But when the FOX series North Shore featured a kiss between two lesbian characters last week, only a few months after Wonderfalls premiered, it became the most recent illustration of an inconsistent policy towards lesbian kisses maintained by FOX and the other major networks.

One of the unwritten rules in network television is that new shows like Wonderfalls need to prove themselves before they are allowed to explore riskier plotlines. "There’s always a nervousness at the networks with new shows with hot-button issues and not wanting to give anyone any reasons not to like the show," explains Fuller. "Once Wonderfalls has an audience, we will be able to 'earn' those moments instead of fighting for them."

But North Shore was allowed to put a lesbian kiss in its very first episode, and a few months prior to Wonderfalls, FOX's ratings-challenged drama Tru Calling featured a lesbian kiss in only its sixth episode. The year before that, Fastlane--yet another FOX drama struggling for viewers--featured a kiss midway through its first season (in a heavily hyped episode which garnered some of the show's best ratings ever).

In fact, FOX has a short but ambitious history of exploiting lesbian kisses for ratings, particularly during sweeps weeks. Besides North Shore (2004), Tru Calling (2003) and Fastlane (2002), lesbian kisses between lesbian/bisexual guest stars, straight characters, or a combination of the two has also been featured on the FOX shows 24 (2001), Firefly (2002), That '80s Show (2002), Family Guy (2001), The X-Files (2000), Ally McBeal (1998 and 1999), and Party of Five (1999). But the only kiss on FOX between an actual lesbian member of the cast and another lesbian was the 2000 kiss between Dark Angel's Original Cindy and ex-girlfriend Diamond (Tangelia Rouse), a one-time guest character who died tragically and painfully at the end of the episode.

All of which points to the fact that it isn't lesbian kisses that FOX finds potentially offensive, it's lesbian relationships. "When you see two women kissing on shows like Fastlane," Fuller contends, "it’s fun, it’s exploitive, and it’s like 'ooh, hot chick-on-chick action' and it’s to get the straight guys to watch. When you’re talking about two adult women in a serious relationship that is genuine and tender, I think it scares [the networks] because you’re trying to say that gay people are normal."

"When it’s played as a joke," Fuller summarizes, "it’s easier for them to digest than when it’s actually real."

Hence the proliferation of lesbian kisses played for laughs, like the one on That 80's Show between bisexual Sophia (played by Brittany Daniel, who also played the lesbian character in last week's North Shore episode) and straight Katie (Tinsley Grimes), which kicked off the show's running gag of Sophia's endless quest to convert Katie. Or the lesbian kiss as sign of impending doom, like the one between lesbian assassin Mandy (Mia Kirshner) and her lover on 24, the lesbian criminal and the undercover cop on Fastlane, and Original Cindy and Diamond on Dark Angel. Or the gratuitous lesbian kiss designed solely to titillate viewers, like the much-hyped kiss between Ally (Calista Flockhart) and Ling (Lucy Liu) on Ally McBeal, and the one on North Shore last week, which took place only after the closeted lesbian tennis player had spent most of the episode seducing a guy and was "caught" by him kissing her publicist girlfriend at the end of the episode.

This inconsistent policy towards lesbian kisses isn't only practiced by FOX, of course: on every network television channel, you are far more likely to see lesbian kisses between guest lesbian characters, straight women, or a straight and gay woman than between lesbian characters who are part of the cast. In its entire ten-year reign, for example, NBC's Friends showed four lesbian kisses, only one of which was between lesbians (and it wasn't even between the show's long-running lesbian couple, who were never actually allowed to kiss on-screen, even at their own wedding).

But every one of the other networks has shown at least one kiss between actual lesbians in a relationship that spans more than one episode. On NBC, there were kisses between Kerry and Kim, and Kerry and Sandy, on ER; on ABC, between Bianca and Lena and Bianca and Maggie on All My Children, Jessie and Katie on Once and Again, Ellen and Laurie on Ellen, and Rhonda and Suzanne on Relativity; on CBS, between Stacy and her girlfriend on Nash Bridges (although this is one of the weakest, for Stacy's girlfriend only physically appeared in one episode); on The WB, between Willow and Tara on Buffy; and on UPN between Willow and Kennedy on Buffy.

Meanwhile, there has never been a kiss between an actual, long-running lesbian couple on a FOX series--although to be fair, you would actually need a long-running lesbian couple on a FOX series to do that, and there's never actually been one of those, either. FOX's only attempt to introduce such a couple was on Wonderfalls--where Fuller was advised "not to say the word 'lesbian' quite so much, and to not make that such a focal point with Sharon's character."

"The networks are invariably run by conservative umbrella corporations that are not as liberal as the television employees," Fuller asserts. Nowhere is this more true than FOX, which is owned by conservative Republican Rupert Murdoch. But while moral or religious issues may occasionally come into play, decisions about what to leave on the cutting room floor more often come down to dollars, and in the world according to FOX, a kiss between regular lesbian characters--characters with whom the audience has developed a relationship over time, has come to like, and perhaps even sympathize with--is clearly believed to be an obstacle to capturing the largest number of viewers and ad dollars, while a kiss between women who will never be in a relationship or whom the viewers will never see again is no threat to anyone, and can actually improve ratings.

Networks need to appeal to a broad swath of people in order to compete for advertising, so they're never going to be on the cutting edge of radical ideas. They simply can't afford to offend Middle America, and that's okay: that's what cable is for. But when FOX tells Fuller that the Wonderfalls' lesbian couple is not allowed to kiss, and then turns around and greenlights a gratuitous lesbian kiss on North Shore a few months later, everyone should be offended.