Is Data symbolic of gays in the military?
Out of the closet with Data
The early episodes of the Next Generation that took up the issue of gays and gay rights did so in subtle ways. It was a Data episode, "The Naked Now", where Tasha, her urge for sex stroked by a emotion-altering disease running unchecked through the ship, takes off her uniform, puts on a seductive dress, goes to Data's quarters, seduces him, and then mates with him. But afterwards when Tasha is cured and things returned to normal, she tells Data that "it never happened" and that he must never bring up the subject again.
What does this have to do with gay rights? Well, consider sexual mores in the 24th century. By that time it is nearly perfectly acceptable for any one of any race to mate with anyone of any other race. However, having sex with androids is still taboo. In other words, sex with living beings is a metaphor for men-women relationships, heterosexuality, while sex with androids is akin to gay relationships, which society frowns on.
Now, looking at it from that light, it is quite clear why Tasha wants to keep her sexual encounter with Data under wraps. Her society would frown on her if it knew that she had mated with Data. Furthermore, there is another component to consider: Tasha is a starfleet security officer: thus she is in the military. If her relationship with Data became known it could have adverse consequences on her career.
In the US military those gays who reveal their orientation also risk persecution or expulsion. While Star Trek is not openly endorsing the gay lifestyle in this episode, the show is saying that it unfair to force gay service members to hide their feelings. It forces many gay soldiers to live a lie, just as it forced Tasha to summarily terminate her relationship with Data.
It's interesting to note that at the end of this episode, Tasha basically tells not to talk about their sexual encounter by saying something very similar to "Don't ask, don't tell", the motto of our military's current policy on gay rights.
Once we understand what Star Trek is saying about gays in the military, the episode "The measure of a man" is very clear. In that episode Cdr. Bruce Maddox wants to have Data transferred out of Starfleet so that he can tinker with Data to see what makes him tick. But the key element is that Data is to be effectively removed from Starfleet against his will, because he's an android with no right to serve as flesh and bloods do. Or, in other words, because Data is the "gay" prototype, he has no right to serve.
There's a trial which is held to determine, among other things, whether Data has the same right to serve in Starfleet as anyone else, much like the trial a homosexual soldier would be forced to deal with if his sexuality were revealed. In the end, it is recognized that Data does have the rights to serve in the military, but for a very interesting reason. During the trial Data's relationship with Tasha comes up, and Data reveals his feelings for her, to show that he is a sentient, self-aware being. But what Data is really telling the court is that he has the right to serve because he isn't really gay, because he has "straight" tendencies. After all, he slept with Tasha, a flesh-and-blood heterosexual. It is drawing on this heterosexual link that gets Data reinstated in Starfleet.
The mixed message that Star Trek is saying here is that if gays play the game and pretend to be heterosexual, they have the right to serve in the military, just as Data, the gay prototype, does.
A few years later, "In Theory", Data has another relationship, this time with an ordinary crewmember named Jenna D'Sora. Jenna has just gotten out of a frustrating relationship with a guy and ready to try something "different", i.e. a relationship with Data, the symbolic gay man. By this time Star Trek has progressed to the point where she can be out of the closet about it--after all, Picard, Riker, Geordi, and the rest of the crew know about it--Jenna ultimately finds the relationship unsatisfying and terminates it. In other words, society has freed her to attempt a gay relationship, she experiments... and finds it just isn't to her liking. This is not exactly a model of success for gay relationships, but neither is it the same as the shameful feeling that Tasha felt after her experimentation.
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