The LGBTQ community. That’s what you won’t see. Eddie Murphy had it right back when he recorded Comedian about never seeing black people in horror movies. If he’d filmed it these days, he’d have been more specific and said they were no heterosexual black people. Why? They’re too smart. White folks, on the other hand, aren’t too bright. At least in the horror genre. Gays and lesbians (white, black, Asian, or any other ethnicity) are like heterosexual black folks in that respect because we don’t get involved in that crap.

I watched The Conjuring 2 over the weekend. Let me just say that if my husband and I lived in a house with our adopted Himalayan Whistle children, and one of them spoke in a demonic voice informing us “It’s my house!”, I would turn into Samuel L. Jackson. “Here are the motherf**king keys. The house is yours. Carpe f**king diem, motherf**ker!”

There’s no discussion. There’s no bringing in the Ghostbusters. There’s no bringing in a priest, mostly because they don’t like us anyway…avoiding the obvious joke if it was a Catholic priest and one of our adopted Himalayan Whistle children was an altar boy. Instead, I’m sure one of us has a relative or someone we’ve slept with in the past who has a living room floor we can sleep on in the present. And we can send some straight white folks to go collect our shit the next day. If they don’t come back, we can send more. It’s like they grow on trees in these movies.

And this could carry over into the Asian horror genre. Ringu?

Heterosexual White Male: Hey, my gay friend, do you want to watch this video that’s been circulating and scaring people?
Gay Male: Shit, no. I don’t watch VHS. I don’t even own a VHS player anymore, not since my vintage porn collection got uploaded onto XTube.
HWM: I have it on DVD.
GM: You’re so straight. You know the gays have all the latest technology. I don’t get into bed and wank for something that’s not on Blu-Ray.
HWM: Okay, that’s…awkward.

See? Shortest. Movie. Ever.

And if by chance the straight man had the gay man over at his house, had a VHS player, and got the gay guy to watch the tape, you know what happens next in the film, right? The phone rings in order to announce the person has a certain number of days left to live.

Heterosexual Straight Male: Are you going to answer that?
Gay Male: Hell, no. You can see I have Caller ID on my iPhone. I don’t recognize that number. It can go to voicemail, then I’ll block it.

Shortest. Movie. Ever.

If you want to snare twink-aged gay men, have them watch the video on Grindr, if that’s even possible. I have no idea. Anyway, they’ll think it’s Art Porn, then fake them out and tell them Madge is calling to thank them for watching it. Yup, a personal call from Madge or Kylie Minogue. Or Babs if it’s an older gay man.

And a movie featuring a gay or lesbian getting possessed? Not going to happen. Hollywood executives are still under the impression we’ve already had more people inside us than a congressional page, so what paying audience is going to believe that any one powerful demon could control us?

I’m all for the LGBTQ community being represented in the film industry. I think it’s awesome, but in the horror genre? There’s already a pretty huge suspension of disbelief required to watch a horror movie, so adding us into the mix when we know darn well we’d never get involved in such things? Well, that just pushes the disbelief too far.

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Kristoffer Gair (who formerly wrote under the pseudonym Kage Alan) is the Detroit-based author of Honor Unbound, A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To My Sexual Orientation, Andy Stevenson Vs. The Lord Of The Loins, Gaylias: Operation Thunderspell, several short stories featured in anthologies (to be combined in a forthcoming book), the novella Falling Awake, its sequel, Falling Awake II: Revenant and Falling Awake III: Requiem.