Anal hasn’t always had a place on television.
Connor (Jack Falahee) and Oliver (Conrad Ricamora) on How to Get Away With Murder.
Mitch Haaseth / ABC
Twenty-six years ago, Blanche (Rue McClanahan) learned that her brother, Clayton (Monte Markham), was gay on The Golden Girls. 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. A few years later, in a famous 1991 episode, Clayton gets married to a man. Blanche is initially horrified, but ultimately, she accepts her brother.
But 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). Blanche doesn't care that Jean is gay, she's just offended that Jean prefers Rose over her.
Blanche'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. That's why How to Get Away With Murder's explicit gay sex is more than just titillation. 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.
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. 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 very first episode featured the (marital) sexual advances of Michael (Rob Reiner) toward his wife, Gloria (Sally Struthers). The Nation called All in the Family "adult television," as much for its sexual content as anything else.
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). 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. "That big football player is a flower?" Archie's wife asks, bewildered. While Michael and Gloria refer directly to their sex life, that big football player, Steve (Philip Carey), refers to his own sex life obliquely: Archie refuses to believe that Steve is gay, and Steve points out that they've known each other for years and he has never mentioned a woman. Archie counters that of course he hasn't mentioned women; he's a bachelor! "Exactly," Steve says with a grin. (An ass-eating grin, one might say.)
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