"That big football player is a flower?" Archie's wife asks, bewildered. Archie (Carroll O'Connor) is convinced that one of Michael's flamboyantly dressed male friends is "a fairy," but he learns later in the episode that his imposing, hypermasculine former linebacker drinking buddy is actually the homosexual. Slightly later in its first season, All in the Family featured one of broadcast television's earliest acknowledged gay characters (perhaps the first was a character on CBS's Medical Center in 1970, in which a gay physician who "passed" became the victim of an anti-gay smear campaign). The Nation called All in the Family "adult television," as much for its sexual content as anything else. The very first episode featured the (marital) sexual advances of Michael (Rob Reiner) toward his wife, Gloria (Sally Struthers). In 1971, CBS aired All in the Family - the show that's remembered for humanizing a slur-spewing racist likely pushed more sexual boundaries than bigotry ones. The visible squeamishness around gay male sex began in earnest in the early '70s, when the first openly gay male characters made their way onto primetime television. When Paxton (Niko Pepaj) says, "He did this thing to my ass that made my eyes water," after a tryst with Connor (Jack Falahee) in the fourth episode, you're not just hearing a backdoor brag you're hearing a taboo burst.
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That's why How to Get Away With Murder's explicit gay sex is more than just titillation. Blanche doesn't care that Jean is gay, she's just offended that Jean prefers Rose over her.īlanche's cognitive dissonance is symptomatic of a larger theme when it comes to LGBT characters on television: The specter of men having sex with men has always been more illicit than sexual desire between women. Blanche is initially horrified, but ultimately, she accepts her brother.īut before the Golden Girls audience even met Clayton, a 1986 episode showed Blanche unfazed by the revelation that a friend of Dorothy (Bea Arthur) is really a friend of Dorothy - Jean (Lois Nettleton) is not only a lesbian, but a lesbian who falls in love with Rose (Betty White). A few years later, in a famous 1991 episode, Clayton gets married to a man.
In the 1988 episode, titled "Scared Straight," Clayton is afraid to come out to her and Blanche is initially horrified when he tells her, but ultimately, she accepts her brother. Twenty-six years ago, Blanche (Rue McClanahan) learned that her brother, Clayton (Monte Markham), was gay on The Golden Girls.