TV Reviews : Gay-Lesbian Programs Scheduled by KCET

As part of its annual recognition of Gay Pride Week, KCET is presenting three programs from Britain’s celebrated “Out on Tuesday,” a weekly series by and about gays and lesbians produced by Britain’s innovative Channel 4. Segments from “Out on Tuesday” always pose the same question: If the Brits can do such enlightened regular TV programming, why can’t Americans do the same?

Stewart Marshall’s “Desire: Sexuality in Germany, 1910-1945,” which airs tonight at 11, is highlighted by interviews with elderly gays and lesbians who survived the Third Reich to share their heart-wrenching recollections of terror and oppression. That female homosexuality was not in fact illegal was circumvented by the Nazis: Lesbians were simply labeled prostitutes and made to work in bordellos for concentration camp personnel.

The second program airs Tuesday, also at 11 p.m., and deals with Britain’s Proposition 28, which prohibits government agencies from spending funds to “promote” homosexuality, a means by which virtually any gay activist effort can be labeled as “promoting” homosexuality. To bring a lighter touch to the proceedings, this sharp segment includes asking Saatchi and Saatchi, one of the world’s top ad agencies, on how it would “sell” homosexuality. Yet another segment interviews mystery novelists who have created lesbian detective heroines.

In an instance of saving the best for last, the final program, which airs Thursday at 11 p.m., opens with a segment on brutally enforced immigration policies that routinely discriminate against gays and lesbians. “Khush,” the next segment, is Pratibha Parmar’s heart-wrenching study of oppression experienced by Southeast Asian gays, and the final segment, “Tuntenhaus” (“House of Queens”), made by “Kamikaze Hearts’ ” gutsy Juliet Bashore, is a tender, angry account of an East Berlin squatters’ commune created by gays and drag queens that is systematically destroyed and looted by West German military police in the immediate wake of reunification. Ironically, Neo-Nazis, who had their own squatters’ commune nearby, supported reunification as strongly as the inhabitants of Tuntenhaus opposed it.