December Bride

"December Bride" is the eleventh episode of the eighth season of the situation comedy television series Roseanne. The episode revolves around the wedding of popular recurring character Leon Carp and his boyfriend Scott. It was written by William Lucas Walker and directed by Gail Mancuso. The episode originally aired on ABC on December 12, 1995, and was one of the first times an American television series had depicted the same-sex wedding of a recurring character. Plot Roseanne meets Scott (Fred Willard) at her diner and learns he will be marrying Leon (Martin Mull) at the end of the week and that Leon had left him at the altar five years earlier. Because they have to be out of town for pre-wedding counseling, Roseanne volunteers to plan the wedding for free. Leon arrives at the wedding venue and is appalled at Roseanne's decor, which includes drag queens, male strippers and enormous pink triangles. He attempts to flee and goes so far as to claim he isn't really gay since he hates shopping, he's insensitive, he detests Barbra Streisand and he's a Republican. Roseanne counters by asking, "But do you like having sex with men? GAY!" In a last desperate effort, he kisses Roseanne. He confirms that he is gay and goes forward with the wedding. With the drag queens and strippers toned down, Leon and Scott exchange their vows. Cameos Mariel Hemingway reprised her role as Sharon, the woman who kissed Roseanne in the 1994 episode "Don't Ask, Don't Tell". When Roseanne's husband Dan (John Goodman) is distressed when the grooms kiss (off-screen), Roseanne chides him for making a fuss about two people of the same sex kissing and Sharon sits down behind her. Her appearance serves as a callback to the earlier episode and the controversy that surrounded it.