Where are you on Wednesday nights? For many people, the answer has become McKinley High. Fox’s Glee tells the stories of a high school vocal choir. This quirky mixture of social outcasts and popular kids has sung and danced its way into the hearts of viewers everywhere. At first glance, the characters can seem stereotypes, but well crafted personalities and relationships have created individuals we can love and despise. In a television world with only a few gay characters, most minor, Glee offers us a key character who is openly gay and features a gay couple as one of the few intact families mentioned.

While the glee club at McKinley high is a mishmash of minorities, one of the major characters on this show is a young man, Kurt Hummel played by 19 year old actor Chris Colfer. While, on the surface, Kurt is a stereotype in search of a day spa to recover from a face full of slushie and looking for knee length cardigans, he’s also won the football game for the school and stepped boldly out of the closet to his friends and single father. He’s bullied by the jocks, but willing to stand up for his friends. The episode all viewers will associate with Kurt boldly featured him singing Beyonce’s “Put a Ring on It,” complete with dance number as he won the big game for the football team. His father, dressed in flannel, cheers. His coming out is met with a quip about sensible pumps, a hug. Chris Colfer made us laugh and cry as Kurt triumphed for his school, bringing glory to all those who took too much crap in high school.

Critics have argued that Glee offers up discrimination. We see Kurt thrown into the dumpster, gay parents criticized for encouraging rebellion, and an expectation that an artistic father will produce a gay son. There’s no doubt at all that we see bullying, homophobia and discrimination in McKinley High. The jocks have to find themselves and learn that they were wrong as the gay kid brings the losing football team victory and they themselves sing and dance on the field to throw the other team off their game. Cheer coach Sue Sylvester is the clear villain of this show. Her comment about gay parents fits in with her suggestions that students be caned and her willing manipulation of students and staff.

High school wasn’t a picnic for most of us, gay or straight. It’s not for the kids in Glee either, as they deal with bullying, pregnancy, sexuality, friendship and competition.