Soap opera fans yearn for gay kiss

Luke Snyder and Noah Mayer haven't kissed for 162 days.

The same-sex couple are not fighting, or living in separate cities, or partaking in a self-imposed session of tantric restraint.

Their romance is a storyline on the popular daytime soap opera As the World Turns - and its chaste nature is starting to get viewers all hot and bothered.

"I don't know about anyone else; what I really wanted from them was a 'throw-his-back-up-against-the-wall-knock-his-hat-off-kiss-him-till-you-can't-breathe' kind of kiss ... à la Jack and Ennis in Brokeback Mountain," Jessica Wadleigh of London, Ont., wrote on a Facebook group dedicated to the duo. "Am I asking for too much?"

"They remain almost always completely non-erotic in their representation in popular culture," said Dr. St. Christian. "Lip-locking is not quite the same as writhing buttocks and sweaty breasts, the mainstay of straight sex scenes in mainstream media."

Male couples on TV or in the movies are usually played for laughs, he said, as in last year's embarrassing Adam Sandler movie I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry.

Even Will and Grace, a long-running sitcom that features two gay men, involved almost no mentions of actual sex.

Most fans of As the World Turns, Dr. St. Christian said, are really only asking for a watered-down interpretation of sexuality.