The Gay Connection of "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?"

I heard that Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962) was a gay classic, the coming-out film of the pre-Stonewall Era, when gay men snipped "But ya are, Blanche!" at each other as gleefully as my generation said "Come up to the lab, and see what's on the slab!"

Legendary drag queen and dramatist Charles Busch, who recorded the DVD commentary, says that it's "one of those handful of movies you have to see to get your gay card."

Well, I got my gay card quite a few years ago, so I thought I'd better get around to seeing what all the fuss was about.

Previously I had seen Bette Davis only in All About Eve, Return from Witch Mountain, and Death on the Nile, and Joan Crawford in nothing (unless you count her portrayal by Faye Dunaway in Mommie Dearest), so I was coming in fresh.

There are 3 parts.

1917: Baby Jane Hudson is a 10-year old Vaudeville star whose signature song is the maudlin "I Wrote a Letter to Daddy."  Her older sister Blanche is jealous.

1934: The young adult Jane Hudson is a flop in Hollywood, but Blanche has become a big star.  Jealous, Jane runs into Blanche with her car, crippling her.  The director cleverly avoids showing Blanche, and shows Jane only in one of Bette Davis's old movies.

1962: Jane (Davis) and Blanche (Crawford) have spent their lives in seclusion in a decaying Hollywood mansion, seeing only their housekeeper and business manager.

When Blanche's old movies are broadcast on television, gaining her a new generation of fans, Jane gets jealous again, and starts torturing her.  During a two-day period, she kills Blanche's pet bird, tries to feed her the bird and a rat, rips the phone out of the wall, ties her up, and...well, that's about it.

Blanche tries to signal to various people that she's in trouble, but Jane always intercepts the message.

Finally Jane has a complete breakdown, dragging Blanche to the beach and reverting to her child self.

Then comes the stunning reveal: Jane wasn't trying to kill Blanche the night of her accident.  Blanche was trying to kill Jane!

Ok, so that makes no sense at all.  But really, nothing about this movie makes much sense.  Like, shouldn't a wheelchair bound person get a room on the first floor?

And I still can't figure out the gay connection.

1. Buddy-bonding male friendships?  No.  There aren't any significant male characters, except in a humorous subplot about the middle-aged Jane trying to revive her child star career.  Victor Buono plays Edwin Flagg, a layabout she hires to help with the musical arrangements, who gamely asserts that her idea is genius, and even flirts with her in the interest of getting his paycheck.

2. Lesbian bonds, then?  No.  Blanche and Jane hate each other.

3. Same-sex desire of any sort, even hinted at?  Not a bit.

4. Critiques of hetero-romance?  Maybe a little.  No one is involved with anyone.  The next-door neighbors consist of a mother and daughter.  Blanche's courting of Edwin Flagg comes across as creepy and unhinged, like her incest-tinged relationship with her father.

5. Gay symbolism?  When Blanche laments, "If only I weren't in a wheelchair!" Jane replies acidly, "But ya are, Blanche!"  Maybe the gay men of a certain age used to lament, "If only I weren't gay!", to which their witty friends replied acidly, "But ya are, Blanche!"

6. Gay author or director?  No.

7. Beefcake?  A little, maybe.  Victor Buono looks like he might have a nice hairy chest, and during the beach scene,  some hunks in swimsuits stare aghast at Jane's breakdown.

I guess you had to be a gay man in the pre-Stonewall era to get it.

The 1991 remake was, apparently, even more over-the-top. Vanessa and Lynn Redgrave play Blanche and Jane.  Instead of a housekeeper, there is massage therapist Dominick  (Bruce A. Young), who is probably gay, and instead of a drunken musician, Jane flirts with aspiring filmmaker, drag queen, and pedophile Billy (John Glover, top photo).

See also: All About Eve

Gay Fan Art 4: Cartoon Kids Grow Up

Fan artists enjoy depicting their favorite cartoon characters involved in same-sex romances or explicit sexual situations.

But there's a problem with many of the more popular characters.  Regardless of how much you may envision them as adults, Bart Simpson and Nelson the Bully are still children, and depicting them having a romantic encounter would look rather silly.  And, if you depict them in an erotic situation, you're facing a 10-year prison sentence in the U.S.

Better to age them into teenagers into adults.

Ben Tennyson (Ben 10), who found a device that allows him to shapeshift into aliens, has appeared in four tv series (2005-2014) and several movies. But he never shapeshifted into this super-bodybuilder before fan artists discovered him.

T. J. Detweiler of the Disney Channel's Recess (2000-2003) was the leader of a band of 3rd grade buddies.  Here he's grown up and beefed up so much that he's unrecognizeable except for the signature red hat.  I don't know why he's tied to a tree in his underwear.

Sometimes fan artists choose rather obscure subjects.  The Backyardigans (2003-2006), for preschoolers on CBS, featured a group of toddler anthropomorphic animals: a penguin, a hippopotamus, a kangaroo, and so on.  This is Tyrone, the red-headed moose, turned into a buffed, morose human teenager.

Timmy Turner of Fairly Oddparents (2001-2014) is "an average kid," ten years old and drawn in a stylized, nondescript fashion.  But here a grown up, buffed up version towels himself off after a shower.

 More after the break.

American Horror Story: Gay World

The anthology series American Horror Story is a hit in gay communities.  It's stylish, witty, adequately creepy -- and gay inclusive, a rarity in horror tv.   Here's my rating of the gay content of the first four seasons: beefcake, buddy-bonding, gay characters, and gay symbolism.  Scale of 1 (terrible) to 5 (excellent).

Season 1: Murder House (2011)

A family moves into a house overrun by the ghosts of previous residents.  Interesting twist: ghosts can become corporeal, with bodies indistinguishable from those of the living.
Beefcake: lots of muscular chests and backsides.  These ghosts get naked a lot.
Buddy Bonding: Troubled teen Tate (Evan Peters) seems to have a little thing for the troubled psychiatrist (Dylan McDermott).
Gay Characters: Zachary Quinto and Teddy Sears play a bickering gay couple who were planning to split up.  Then they were murdered in the house, and now they are stuck together for all eternity.  The other ghosts and humans are generally nonchalant about them.
Gay Symbolism: None.
Overall Rating: ****

Season 2: Asylum (2012)

An evil nun runs a creepy asylum for the criminally insane in the 1960s.  With demons, Anne Frank, and alien abductions.
Beefcake:  Not much.  Evan Peters as an alien abductee.
Buddy Bonding: None.  Again, all of the significant friendships are male-female.
Gay Characters: Sarah Paulson as Lana Winters, a lesbian reporter committed to the asylum and forced to undergo a homophobic "treatment" regiment.  In the present, she's a famous writer, out-and-proud.
Gay Symbolism: None.
Overall Rating: ****

Season 3: Coven (2013)

A school for teen witches, a voodoo queen, and the re-animated corpse of 19th century murderess Delphine LaLaurie.  What more could you ask for?  Maybe some gay characters?
Beefcake: Lots.  Madame LaLaurie had a thing for torturing hunky male slaves, and the teen witches build themselves a Frankenstein-monster boyfriend (Evan Peters again).
Buddy Bonding: Some female bonding going on.
Gay Characters: None, except for a fruity Truman Capote-esque member of the Witches Council, who appears briefly in two episodes.
Gay Symbolism:  Witches hiding in the shadows, afraid to let anyone know their true identity, etc., etc.
Overall Rating: ***

Season 4: Freak Show (2014)
A financially-strapped freak show in 1950s Florida, with a murderous clown and his dapper young apprentice wandering around.
Beefcake:  Evan Peters again, the bare buns of a Viking Hustler, a circus strongman, and an amazing bodybuilding little person (his name is Kyle Pacek).
Buddy Bonding: Men are mostly competitors.
Gay Characters: Several.  But for a change, Dandy, the ultra-feminine murderer, is not.
Gay Symbolism: Freaks hiding in the shadows, et., etc.
Overall Rating: *****

The Walking Dead: Gay People Unwelcome at the End of the World

I saw an episode or so of The Walking Dead on Netflix a couple of years ago.  I wasn't impressed.

It begins, like 28 Days Later, with Georgia cop Rick (Andrew Lincoln) awakening from a coma to discover that most of the population has turned into zombies, leaving only scattered bands of survivors.  He goes off in search of his wife and son.  The first survivor he meets is heartbroken because his wife has become a zombie.

That was more than enough heterosexism at the end of the world, thank you.

Recently I've begun watching again. We're in the middle of Season 3.  So far there have been innumerable other men who have lost their wives, plus a few women who have lost their husbands.  Apparently the zombies target only one half of each heterosexual couple. 

And there's been exactly one reference to the existence of LGBT people: when former prison inmate Axel (Lew Temple) joins the group, he complains that it doesn't have any eligible women: they're either too young, or already involved, and Carol (Melissa McBride) is a lesbian. She protests that she's not a lesbian -- she lost her husband to the zombies --she just happens to have short hair.

That's it.

The comic book series apparently introduces a gay couple in Issue 67: Andrew and Eric, "the only two gay guys left in the world," who live in the Alexandria, Virginia Safe Zone.  Eric is eventually killed, but Andrew survives and becomes a regular character.

The tv series hasn't gotten out of Atlanta yet, so there has been no opportunity to introduce Andrew and Eric.  You could invent gay characters of your own, of course, but every time a fan board suggests that this or that character might be gay, the producers summarily deny it. 

Norman Reedus (left), who plays Daryl Dixon, the redneck hunter (and the only one in the group who hasn't found a way to stay perfectly coiffed) states that his character is "prison gay," open to same-sex relationships if there aren't any women available.  But this apparently was his own decision in fleshing out the character, unknown to the producers.

There are no gay people in their series to date.

Are they making a homophobic statement about the survival chances of limp-wristed, fashion-obsessed swishes in a zombie attack?  

Or are they proclaiming, like Giles on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, that with so many important survival issues, there is no room at the end of the world for discussions of "orientations"?  Except heterosexual orientations, of course.

Or are they just following tradition: except for a few low-budget indie pictures and Stephen King's Cell, gay people are always unwelcome at the end of the world.

But not to worry: there's plenty of beefcake, such as Shane (Jon Bernthal (top photo, Rick's cop buddy who slept with his wife while he was in a coma), and Glenn (Steven Yeun, left), a former pizza delivery boy who becomes the group's most skillful scout.

And there's plenty of same-sex buddy-bonding going on, sometimes between men who don't express any heterosexual interest (presumably they are still grieving over wives lost to the zombies).

So we can go back to what we did in the dark ages before Stonewall: find glimmers of meaning even when we are being told over and over again that we do not exist.

Or we can stop watching.

See also: Two Zombie Movies with Gay Characters; Jose Pablo Cantilo; and The Postapocalyptic Fade-Out Kiss.

Kissing Boys to the Bee Gees

For good or bad, I'm a child of the disco era.  The songs of the Bee Gees bring back a rush of memories, especially those from their annus mirabilis, 1977-78:

When I brought Tyrone to the Harvest Dancewe were listening to "If I Can't Have You" on the car radio:

Don't know why I'm surviving every lonely day, when there's got to be no chance for me.
My life would end, and it doesn't matter how I cry.
My tears of love are a waste of time if I turn away

 I Kissed a Boy Under the Mistletoe at my brother's Christmas party, then went upstairs and turned on KSTT radio to "How Deep is Your Love":

Cause we're living in a world of fools, breaking us down, when they all should let us be.
We belong to you and me.

When I figured It out, "Stayin' Alive" was playing in the background of everybody's life.

Well now, I get low and I get high, and if I can't get either, I really try.
Got the wings of heaven on my shoes -- I'm a dancin' man, and I just can't lose.

Objectively analyzed, the lyrics are simplistic and contradictory -- and heterosexist, loaded down with "girl! girl! girl!"

Yet no songs have ever been so meaningful.

The BeeGees consisted of three Australian brothers, Barry, Robin, and Maurice Gibb.  They had been recording for two decades before they hit it big with the soundtrack to Saturday Night Fever, which launched the disco craze.   They were apparently all heterosexual, but their music drew heavily from the gay-and-black underground scene.

Their younger brother Andy had an annus mirabilis of his own in 1977-78, with "Love Is Thicker than Water," "Shadow Dancing," "An Everlasting Love," and "Don't Throw It Away."

He became a teen idol, his bare hairy chest and bulge featured prominently in Tiger Beat, as well as the "nearly" gay interview magazine After Dark.

 See also: Figuring It Out; The Eagles; and Rod and Al Stewart.

Veronica's Closet: How Not to Play a Gay Character

In the 1990s, TV writers didn't know what to do with their gay characters.

They knew what gay men were: men who were really women.  Men who were interested in show tunes and chick flicks and skin care products, who used their hands when they talked, who secretly wore dresses.  And who might...possibly...date men.

  But what to do with them?

Veronica's Closet (1997-2000) took a novel approach: how about a gay man who doesn't know he's gay?  He'll have the show tunes and skin care products, but claim to be straight!  Won't that be hilarious?

It wasn't hilarious at all.

The show aired after Seinfeld, and starred Kirstie Allie, formerly of Cheers, so it became popular.

Veronica ran a clothing company designed to increase women's chances of romance (modeled after Victoria's Secret).

Her staff included:
1. Olive (Kathy Najimy), whose job was undefined.
2. Underwear model turned publicist Perry (Dan Cortese, top photo).
3. Uptight marketing manager and token black guy Leo (Daryl Mitchell).
4. Secretary Josh (Wallace Langham).

Josh started out as feminine-coded, working as a secretary for a women's underwear company.  And the feminine traits piled on, week after week. Not only show tunes and skin care products, but pink handkerchiefs, demitasse, a worry over getting fat, a female best friend, no interest in sports, a girly car, hints at drag. For heaven's sake, his middle name was Nicole!

Therefore he must be gay.  The entire cast acted as if he was gay, asking his advice on skin care products and trying to fix him up with men  When he protested that he was straight, they smiled knowingly.

"Wait," I wanted to ask, "Has Josh ever expressed the slightest interest in men?

"No, never," Veronica might answer.

"Has he ever expressed any interest in women?"

"Yes, often.  He's been shown having sex with women.  He had a girlfriend, nearly got married. But what does that have to do with it?  He's feminine, so he's gay."

Near the end of the series, Josh finally gave and admitted that he was feminine...um, I mean gay.

He reluctantly gave up his heterosexual romances and began dating a guy, not because he was interested, but because that's what feminine...um, I mean gay men do, right?

Right?


The cast doesn't have a great record on gay rights.  Kathy Najimy is bisexual. Kirstie Allie is not a gay ally

Wallace Langham, who played Josh, turned out to be rather homophobic also.  In 2000 he beat up a gay tabloid reporter while using anti-gay slurs.  He was sentenced to 450 hours of community service for LGBT charities.

Gary Daniels: Man-Mountain with Gay Subtexts

During the brawny Old West of the 1980s, when Ronald Reagan was squaring off against the Evil Empire and Jerry Falwell was squaring off against the gays, we needed lots of man-mountains:

Buffed shirtless guys who could storm through the jungles of Southeast Asia to rescue kidnapped buddies,  get revenge on murdered wives or girlfriends, or take out entire enemy armies with their bare hands.

Unfortunately, after the first hundred buffed guys with martial arts training hit Hollywood, the market became highly competitive, and besides, 25-year old kickboxer Gary Daniels was British, unlikely to be cast in a movie promoting American Exceptionalism.

So he went to the Philippines instead.  After a buddy-bonding Indiana Jones rip-off, The Secret of King Mahis Island (1988), he was cast as a man-mountain who ignores his wife and gets nude with his buddy prior to taking out the evil Vietnamese army in Final Reprisal (1988).  Some rather explicit gay subtexts.

By the 1990s, Gary had managed to break into American film, playing kickboxer managers, villains, and opponents in the Big Match, fighting to rescue his kidnapped brother (in American Streetfighter), fighting to rescue his buddy (in Firepower), fighting to get revenge on his brother (Hawk's Vengeance).

Gary's characters had little time for women: the target audience of heterosexual male teenagers wanted to see muscles, fights, and explosions, and couldn't care less about a fade-out kiss.  The result was a lot of gay subtexts.

During the 2000s, as Gary got older, he began playing more fully-clothed roles, as attorneys, detectives, and military officers who oversee the punching and kicking, but don't indulge personally.  His most memorable recent role is The Expendables (2010), in which a group of aging man-mountains is hired to take out a Latin American dictator.

Two of them, played by Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jet Li, reveal that they are a gay couple in The Expendables 2 (2012).  Or maybe they're just joking.  Either way, they're acknowledging the homoerotics behind the man-mountain genre.

Peter MacNicol: Not a Teen Idol

Peter MacNicol was not related to Jimmy and Kristy McNichol -- notice the name is spelled differently -- but everyone thought he was.  In fact, everyone at Augustana College went to Dragonslayer in 1981 because they  mistakenly believed that Peter was the buffed 21-year old teen idol.

It wasn't good.  Derivative, heterosexist...and sword-and-sorcery heroes are supposed to be man-mountains, like Arnold Schwarzenegger.  Or Jimmy McNichol.  But Peter was scrawny!

In Sophie's Choice (1982), he plays a young aspiring writer in the 1950s South, who inexplicably starts a romance with an elderly Jewish lady named Sophie (played by Meryl Streep).  She's a concentration camp survivor who had to make a terrible choice -- I'm not going to tell you what it was -- that renders her forever incapable of falling in love.

But we get to see Peter's scrawny physique, and there's a gay subtext with the always flamboyant Kevin Kline.

A couple of dramas followed, which nobody saw, but might have some more gay subtexts -- with Burt Reynolds in Heat (1986) and Tim Guinee in American Blue Note (1989).

Remember in Ghostbusters (1984), Rich Moranis plays a nerd with a crush on Dana, who becomes possessed by the evil spirit?  Ghostbusters II (1989), which nobody saw, had precisely the same plot, with Peter as the nerd with a crush on Dana who's possessed by the evil spirit.

You probably saw him as the nerdy villain Gary Granger, summer camp manager who tried to force Wednesday and Pugsley into conformity in Addams Family Values (1993).

And as Renfield, snively servant of the wisecracking vampire in Mel Brooks' parody Dracula: Dead and Loving It (1995).

But he didn't really find his niche until he played John Cage, eccentric co-founder of Allie's law firm in Allie McBeal (1997-2002).  The program was generally heterosexist, and occasionally homophobic, but it did give John a gay-subtext friendship with his best bud Richard Fish (Greg Germann). 

He got into a bit of a controversery in 2001, when John romances a woman played by Anne Heche, who had just announced that she had "become" a lesbian.  Would audiences accept a hetero-romance played by a lesbian?

Apparently it wasn't a problem, and later Heche "turned back" to straight.

Since Allie McBeal, Peter has starred in Numb3rs, 24, and Grey's Anatomy, and done a lot of voice work, notably playing X the Eliminator, gay-vague fanboy and wannabe arch-nemesis of Harvey Birdman on Adult Swim.

See also: Jimmy McNichol and the Gay Coach

Looking for Beefcake on the Swim Team

This isn't a picture of my high school swim team -- the yearbook photo wouldn't scan properly -- but two of the boys look exactly like my old high school classmates.

Back row right: looks exactly like Craig, who  sat next to me in every class from third grade through junior high,  participated in the famous streaking incident of 1974, and invited me to "get down" at his graduation party in 1978.

Front row center: looks exactly like David, who was dating my buddy Emily, except David was a bit more impressive in the locker room.

Is it any wonder that I went to all the swim meets?

Swimming was always a reliable source of beefcake.  In the summer, you could go to Longview Park Pool to look at the never-ending parade of beefcake, men with hairy chests, jocks in red swimtrunks, heavily-muscled bodies glistening in the afternoon sun.   When it got cold, you could get your beefcake quota by reading sports books about swimming (This also satisfied your parents, who were constantly trying to push you into liking sports.)

I collected Boy Scout instruction manuals on swimming, diving, water polo, and life saving, and guides to high school and college swim teams.

The only athlete I could name offhand was Mark Spitz, who won 7 gold medals in the 1972 Summer Olympics and had guest shots all over tv in 1973 and 1974.  Most of the gay boys at Washington Junior High had this poster on their bedroom walls.

See also: Cruising in the Cub Scouts.

Lucas Black: Gay Subtexts in the South

In the movies, people from the South are homophobic even when they're not.

Take this speech from Sling Blade (1996), in which 13-year old Frank (Lucas Black) explains why his mom's best friend (John Ritter) can't do anything to protect her from her abusive boyfriend:

He's funny, you know. Not funny "Ha-Ha", funny queer. He likes to go with men instead of women. That makes him not able to fight too good. He sure is nice, though. He's from St. Louis. People who are queer get along better in a big town. I wish he liked to go with women, I'd rather he be Mama's boyfriend than Doyle.

So he's got an affliction that keeps him from being able to fight or become Mama's boyfriend.  Sure is nice, though.

But implicit homophobia in Southern characters doesn't prevent gay subtexts; in fact, it facilitates them, since "no one" will believe that a masculine-coded Southerner could possibly be "funny queer."

Check out the career of 30-year old Lucas Black:

1. All the Pretty Horses (2000).  He plays a teenager in the Old West who rides with cowboy buddies (Matt Damon, Henry Thomas) and doesn't get a girl.

2. Killer Diller (2004). Good old boys Wesley and Vernon (Lucas, William Lane Scott) start a band together.

3. Friday Night Lights (2004). About a struggling Texas high school football team, with the coach (Billy Bob Thornton) big-brothering star athlete (Lucas).

4. Jarhead (2005). Marine (Jake Gylenhaal) buddies around with his platoon.  Lucas has only a few scenes as Southern-fried Chris Kruger, but there's a lot of testosterone in the air.

5. The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift (2007).  Alabama teen Sean Boswell (Lucas) moves to Japan with his Dad and gets a girlfriend, but buddies with  Han (Sung Kang). Han is killed, and the rage over his death leads Sean to become the champion drift-racer of Japan.

6. 42 (2013). Sports biography about baseball player Jackie Robinson.  Lucas plays Peewee Reese, Jackie's close friend.

Not bad for a Southern Baptist boy from Decatur, Alabama.

Roddy McDowall: Hiding in Plain Sight

Gay male actors born before Stonewall pretended to be heterosexual as a matter of survival.  They had "Hollywood marriages."  They brought heterosexual dates to events, and gave interviews about the type of woman they preferred.  Some, like George Takei and Richard Chamberlain, came out in old age, when their careers were over or almost over.  Some, like Charles Nelson Reilly and Paul Lynde, had such a fey stage presence that they figured it was obvious, no  need to come out. And some like Liberace, denied the "allegations" to their dying breath.

Roddy McDowall never denied anything, but he never said anything, either.  He "hid in plain sight," taking advantage of the homophobic myth that gay men don't exist, or if they do they're mincing, lisping pieces of fluff.

So, in this photo shoot, Roddy and fellow gay actor Tab Hunter cook weiners and cake in their underwear, and apparently no one in the 1960s had any idea.

Born in 1928, Roddy got his start as a child star, bringing wartime angst to the screen with boy-and-dog or boy-and-horse vehicles.  In his teens, he played Malcolm in Macbeth and David Balfour in an adaption of Robert Louis Stevenson's Kidnapped. 

He made the transition from child star to young adult seamlessly, playing prissy gay-vague characters, usually costarring with a more macho muscleman: Stuart Whitman in Shock Treatment (1964), Robert Redford in Inside Daisy Clover (1965), Dave Draper in Lord Love a Duck (1966).

His friends were usually muscular, too, such as Scotty Beckett and fellow gay actor Farley Granger. (There was originally a girl between them, but she's been photoshopped out).





During the 1970s, Roddy started making movies again, mostly playing fey, easily-ruffled characters, sometimes comic relief, sometimes villains. Sci-fi, horror, adventure, black comedy: The Poseidon Adventure, The Legend of Hell House, Arnold, Embryo, The Flood!, The Cat from Outer Space, Double Trouble, The Evil Inside Me....  Sadly, he may be best remembered for the gay-vague Galen in the Planet of the Apes franchise.

Occasionally guest spots on tv series, but only two starring roles, on The Fantastic Journey and Tales of the Gold Monkey, which I remember fondly because I dated one of the cast members.

Most of his characters in 261 movie and tv roles were gay-coded, but none were gay.

That's something gay actors of the closet generation would never do.

The key was to not say anything, and occasionally pose for a photo shoot entitled "Calling All Girls."

He died in 1998.

Paul Michael Glaser: From Starsky to AIDS Activist

Paul Michael Glaser was half of the quintessential gay couple of the 1975-1979 tv series, Starsky and Hutch (with David Soul): two cop partners who loved each other, a lot.

Although they didn't play up the gay subtext, they were ok with it, merely issuing an occasional wink-wink protest like "Anyone who watches the show can see that Starsky and Hutch like women."

After Starsky and Hutch, Paul starred in a few tv movies, but then his attentions were drawn elsewhere.  In 1985 he and his wife Elizabeth discovered that she had contracted HIV through an emergency blood transfusion, and unwittingly transmitted the virus to their children, Ariel (born 1981) and Jake (born 1984).

During the 1980s, when AIDS was being advertised as a "Gay Disease," people assumed that Paul was gay, and had infected his wife and children.  They experienced the same fear and homophobic harassment that gay people with AIDS were experiencing.

But they didn't let homophobia affect their relationship with the gay community.  They were always staunch supporters of gay rights.

After Ariel died in 1988, Elizabeth began the Pediatric AIDS Foundation.  She became a national advocate for AIDS awareness and research, speaking at the Democratic National Convention in 1992.  She died in 1994, and Paul took on the management of the organization.

Jake has grown up living with HIV.  He is now an AIDS advocate and actor.

The First Gay Kiss on Children's TV

The Cartoon Network's  Clarence (2014-) was on my list of potential gay-subtext programs to watch, but I wasn't hopeful.  The premise seemed sort of boring: boy with some friends.  Where were the fairy godparents, wizard academies, or superheroes?

Clarence is a chubby, optimistic kid with two friends, Jeff (his rule-spouting superego) and Sumo (his get-er-done id).  He lives with his single mom and her live-in boyfriend, and has the usual assortment of bullies, crushes, and martinet teachers.

I watched one episode, and turned it off: Clarence, about age 10, was going on a date with a girl!  Why does indoctrination into heteronormativity have to begin so darn early? At least my parents, teachers, and friends waited until I was in junior high to begin the "What girl do you like?" interrogation.

According to the Clarence wiki, several of Clarence's friends also date girls or have crushes on girls. Doesn't sound promising.

In July 2014, Skyler Page, who created the series and voiced Clarence, was fired after allegations of sexual assault by coworker Emily Partridge.  Other coworkers have since mentioned that Page often made sexist statements and behaved inappropriately.  Spencer Rothbell (left), one of the writers, became the new voice of Clarence.  

Maybe the second season will be a little more inclusive.

The gay characters:  Clarence's teacher is waiting for a blind date.  A cute guy shows up.  She thinks, "Great, this is the one!"  But the cute guy is actually meeting another guy.  They hug and kiss cheeks.  Her face falls as she sees that her real blind date is ugly.

Un-named walk-on characters, one second on screen, presented as a problem for a heterosexual character, in a situation where no child is present.

But in the boardrooms of the Cartoon Network, where "Children must never know that gay people exist!", it's a giant leap forward.

Of course, fans are bound to scream"They can't be gay!  Friends kiss each other on the cheek!  Or brothers!  They could be brothers!"

Anything they can think of to avoid acknowledging that there are gay people in the world.

See also: Cory Haim's Bubble Bath; and The First Gay Character on Children's TV