In the wake of the Supreme Court’s historic rulings last week, we were able to blow the lid off Hollywood’s Gay Marriage Conspiracy (see part one here), wherein American writers, producers and television executives spent years manipulating audiences and public officials through mainstream entertainment in pursuit of their marriage equality agenda. And it worked!
And like Edward Snowden before us, we thought the most effective way to share this explosive information was in separate dumps, of documents that is. So herewith, more evidence, in the form of another list, detailing the depth and breadth of this ultimately successful confederacy of family values.
Bewitched, 1964
By employing a supernatural premise to introduce Paul Lynde’s Uncle Arthur (pictured), Bewitched producers smuggled in a gay along with the warlock. Lynde’s character made only ten appearances on long-running and beloved sitcom, but they were memorable for the fact that Samantha’s mother Endora’s brother was so clearly camp. To Endora: “When I think of you as a blood relative, I long for a transfusion.”
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Lost in Space, 1965
Dr. Zachary Smith started out as an enemy agent and secondary character in Irwin Allen’s production, but by Season 2 the flamboyant Jonathan Harris (pictured) was so popular he was rewriting his own dialogue and became the star of the show. And he had a Robot husband. “Oh, the pain!”
Are You Being Served?, 1972
If the NSA scandal wasn’t enough, more proof of Anglo-American collusion. This enormously popular Britcom arrived in America a few years after it’s UK premiere via PBS. Mrs. Slocombe’s pussy aside, what’s remarkable about this ensemble comedy set in a department store was the actor John Inman’s denial of his character’s ever-so-obvious homosexuality. Both he and creator David Croft maintained Mr. Humphries’ sexual orientation was never explicitly stated and that he was “just a mother’s boy.” Well, of course he was.
An American Family, 1973
An American Family was a serialized documentary on PBS and the first “reality” show of its kind (HBO’s Cinema Verite was the award-winning “making of’ movie made in 2011). Prodigal son Lance Loud (pictured above, top right) figured prominently when he traveled to New York and hung out at the Chelsea Hotel with Warhol superstars and came out as gay. Super-cute guys in bell-bottoms and feathered hair everywhere started going gay.
Match Game, 1973
Daytime TV audiences were the target when Mark Goodson and Bill Todman bought Gene Rayburn a new stick mic for a redo of the 1960s game show. This time it was double penetration in the form of risqué material and bawdy celebrity panelists, including Charles Nelson Reilly (pictured), who with beard Brett Somers to his left were setting the stage for Will & Grace’s Jack and Karen with their naughty double entendre and tape-day drinking. Fill-in-the-blanks like “Every morning, John puts ______ on his cereal” became a cause for celebration.
Love, Sidney, 1981
Producers cleverly neutered the gay title character in this short-lived 80’s sitcom, based on a story written by Marilyn Cantor Baker, and adapted into a TV movie called Sidney Shorr: A Girl’s Best Friend. See, Sidney (Tony Randall, pictured)was gay in the short story, and even gay in the MOTW (kind of), but then not in the first season of the sitcom, and even less in the second, and then pow! they show a picture of his dead boyfriend on the mantle in the very last episode and you can figure it out for yourself.
Golden Girls, 1985
Susan Harris, creator of gay oasis in the primetime desert Soap a few years earlier, was at it again in 1985 with the help of four old ladies and their veranda. Old people are funny, what with their memory lapses and boring stories and slutty behavior. And while Golden Girls did a great job inculcating mainstream audiences with its left wing agenda, it was also an unlikely gay hit. Picture it: Saturday night, millions of homos on sofas watching a transvestite, a slut, an idiot and a Tourretes patient for 22 minutes while pre-drinking before the disco. Well, maybe not so unlikely.
Roseanne, 1988
Working class Roseanne introduced working class America to lots of gay stuff on her show, like getting girl-kissed by the always hot Mariel Hemingway in Season 6 in an episode called “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” (yeah, right around that time) and then having a genuine gay wedding with regular Martin Mull and groom Fred Willard! Cute couple.
In Living Color, 1990
“Men on Film” was the best part of this hit-or-miss Fox sketch show and a backdoor into African American hearts and minds. Blaine and Antoine (Damon Wayans and David Alan Grier) were spot-on but affectionate portraits of fey black men that allowed African Americans and gay men and African American gay men to all laugh together, kubaya, even at the Super Bowl! Some gay hardliners got their panties in a bunch because these two were reinforcing “negative” stereotypes, but who’s calling whom a stereotype, anyway, Mary? Jesus, get a haircut. Two snaps up! for these two brave performers!
Ellen, 1994
She was just a neurotic bookstore owner, with her friends Jeremy Piven and Joely Fisher, but the funniest part about comedian Ellen Degeneres and her show Ellen was we all knew she was gay (the comedian that is), so it was fairly ridiculous to see her stumbling through dates and talking about her attraction to men, because let’s face it, Degeneres is funny but she’s not an actress, like the way Meryl Streep or Bette Davis is an actress, so, you know. Anyway, the first three seasons of the show were like a waiting game and then she did it, after fooling us all this time! Oh, Ellen! She blurted it out on an airport PA, yep, she’s gay. And now Queen Latifah has a talk show, too, so that’s how that works.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer, 1997
I didn’t watch this show (sorry!) but vampires are super-gay and apparently so is Joss Whedon, so you get the picture. Oh, wait, Joss Whedon is not gay and has a wife. I love this conspiracy.
Oz, 1997
Here’s the thing. Prisons are for criminals, and criminals are bad people, and some of them are really bad, like murderers and white supremacists. So you do a TV show about these guys and there’s not going to be anything redeeming about them, right? And if these reprobates are corn-holing each other, well, just one more example of gay depravity. And that’s how you lure your premium cable network audience in, because it turns out some of these guys are hot (such as Christopher Meloni, pictured) and kind of likable and yeah, they’re corn-holing each other but, you know, what are you going to do, they’re in prison, right?
Six Feet Under, 2001
Four years later HBO was conspiring again with this ensemble drama set in a funeral home. Enter couple David and Keith (Michael C. Hall and Michael St. Patrick, pictured), whose relationship ebbed and flowed like anyone else’s might, with love, tenderness, violence, rage, forgiveness and love again.
True Blood, 2008
Sure, this show ran off the rails a while ago, but, hey, more vampires! And werewolves and shapeshifters and voodoo and a lot of sex, and homoeroticism and gay stuff mixed in like, you know, this crazy world has everything and do what feels good and if I’m going to stab you in the heart with a silver crucifix it’s because I don’t like you, not because you’re gay. Yay! Good job, now you can be cancelled.
hyhybt
Nitpicking, I know, but the original Match Game is from the 60’s, not the 50’s.
Andy
WHAT?!?! No Will & Grace?!?! This list is NOTHING without that show!
TinoTurner
Ellen was already a stand up mega star and author when that show came out, I was excited to see it. What annoyed the hell out of me was that her ENTIRE supporting cause were nauseating and lacked chemistry. I knew after the first episode that it would never last and it had nothing to do with her love of vagina.
BigWoody
Don’t forget these infamous conspirators: Flip Wilson’s drag as Geraldine Jones in the variety show “Flip” (1970), and Wayland Flowers’ over the top puppet talk show “Madame’s Place” (1982).
Some believe the gay mafia’s first “hits” were Milton Berle’s many appearances in drag and Jonathan Winters’ Maude Frikert.
My favorite subversive was Alan Sues, the actor best known as a flamboyantly campy regular on “Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In” in the late 1960s and early ’70s. Alan had me loving the peanut butter early in life when he became the commercial spokesman for Peter Pan Peanut Butter. http://www.youtube.com/watch%3Fv=NFKMDauqQFU
BigWoody
Alan Sues On Laugh-In as Big Al “I’m a tinkledigger” LOL .http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AOBBPoODZFY
tardis
I love Buffy.
Jackhoffsky
Peter Marshall: Paul, in what famous book will you read about a talking ass who wonders why it’s being beaten?
Paul Lynde: I read it, “The Joy of Sex.”
DickGreenleaf
Queer As Folk never hid their intentions. And when it came to marriage they showed reality with some characters opting in(Lyndsey and Melanie, Michael and Ben) and the central characters opting out(Brian and Justin). The only subversive part of the show was straight women tuning in to see gay men have sex(and love one another).
Kangol
No The Ghost & Mrs. Muir, on which Charles Nelson Reilly flamed up the screen in the 1960s?
No Soap, with Billy Crystal as Jodie, one of the great out gay characters of the 1970s?
No Maude, with one of the major queer icons of that same decade?
No Dynasty, with Steven, another gay heartthrob of the 1980s?
No Good Times, with Michael, who was the very model of a smart, young gay man?
No Three’s Company, with John Ritter playing “gay” and stealing every scene from his fellow castmates (except for Don Knotts as Mr. Ferley)?
No Noah’s Arc, which is one of the rare shows that featured a mostly black and brown gay cast?
BigWoody
@Andy: @Kangol:
Check the first link (in the first paragraph) of this article. It will take you to “level 1” list of shows.
JaviNYC
MTV’s “My So Called Life” and almost every season of “The Real World” featured a gay characters. These guys were a huge part of my growing up gay in the 90s.
More recently, Will & Grace, Glee and Modern Family have been a huge part of the momentum swaying public opinion.
Stevenw
Turrets? Sophia had ‘Turrets’? I do not get this joke.
Unless it is not a joke and a appalling mis-spelling of Tourettes.
hephaestion
I recall how the American public abandoned Ellen’s sit-com after she came out. They supported her coming out but they couldn’t deal with her show after they started writing lesbian stories. One of those shows involved a hilarious twist in which Ellen dreamt that gays were the majority and straights were an oppressed minority. It was brilliant and hilarious, but straights HATED it. Straight people absolutely could not deal with being the brunt of even the gentlest jokes.
Kangol
@BigWoody:
Thanks, BigWoody!