From Miss Frizzle to Splter, we know a gay mentor when we see one.
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Tom of Fland and Bill Ward of Dm fame are gay artists whose work I greatly admire, as well as the humor and imagatn of Roberta Gregory, Howard Cse's precise le and sophistited storytellg, and Ivan Velez 's ic/soap opera Tal Of the Closet. When live-actn televisn began makg roads for gay reprentatn durg the turn of the century, animatn remaed a tratgly straight (if equently queer-d) affair.
The reasons behd the medium’s slowns were obv and, predictably, homophobic.
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So, pearl-clutchg TV crics would argue, children shouldn’t be exposed to “adult” (read: gay) characters through rnchy rtoons. Wtern animatn, meanwhile, eher featured gay characters one-off episos (see “The Simpsons'” inic John Water’s gay steel l episo) if they were aimed more at adults, or kept hidn subtext if the target dience was younger.
For example, years after “The Proud Fay” first aired, creator Ralph Farquhar admted that the character of Michael was wrten as gay, but had to be merely queer-d to nform wh Disney’s standards at the time.