GLAAD Heralds 'Dawson's' Kiss

May 1 -- This Wednesday, WB teen soaper Dawson's Creek will pick up where it left off last season — with a deliberate kiss between two of its resident male hotties.

But unlike last season's finale, which ended with a brief smooch between Jack (Kerr Smith) and Ethan (Adam Kaufman), this scene-stealer is no junior-league peck.

"I timed it," Scott Seomin, a spokesman for the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, told USA Today. Seomin described the kiss between Jack and his lover, Tobey (David Monahan), as "a 5 1/2 second, mouth-to-mouth kiss. We haven't seen anything like this before on network TV."

Protesting the Love

Naturally, the episode is causing a stir even before it has been broadcast. "The first kiss was disturbing enough," protests Heather Cirmo of Washington, D.C.'s Family Research Council, adding that it misleads "impressionable teens who have questions about their sexuality by promoting a myth that homosexuality is something you're born with."

Dawson's Creek executive producer Greg Berlanti fires back, "It's certainly not a myth, and I think a lot of kids out there deserve to see positive images of who and what they are. I watched millions of teenagers kiss on TV growing up, and it didn't make me straight."

Speaking of positive images, GLAAD just handed out its 12th annual awards for media that fairly and accurately portray the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender communities. Among the top winners: NBC's Will & Grace (Outstanding Comedy Series), Showtime's Queer as Folk (Outstanding Drama Series), Oscar-nominated film Billy Elliot (Outstanding Film in Wide Release), and indie flick The Broken Hearts Club (Outstanding Film in Limited Release).