Billy Crystal Portrayed First Openly Gay Ma Character on TV — si the 'Soap' Story

LBGTQ TV: A HISTORY OF GAY CHARACTERS, OM STONEWALL TO ‘BATWOMAN’

Gay characters the post-Stonewall era go a lot wir and eper than ‘Will & Grace’ and ‘Ellen.’ * first gay man on tv *

The 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Rts is a tone for the gay-rights movement, one beg memorated wh everythg om paras to documentari. As a Vulture say about a groundbreakg “All the Fay” episo noted, “In a moment where crics pot to ss as a medium that helped change public opns about gay rights, we should remember that the procs didn’t beg wh ‘Will & Grace’ or ‘Glee. Long before that, though, there were signature, cludg the 1971 episo of “All the Fay” which the bigoted, homophobic Archie Bunker was stunned to disver that an old buddy was gay.

Six years later, Billy Crystal beme one of the first openly gay regular characters a seri “Soap, ” the broad ABC satire. Addnal breakthroughs followed seri like “Roseanne” and “Friends, ” eventually leadg to the gay uple “Morn Fay” a ago. In 1972, Hal Holbrook played a divorced dad hidg the fact he was gay om his son “That Certa Summer, ” nsired one of the first sympathetic pictns of gay characters on televisn.

PBS also broke ground realy TV wh “An Amerin Fay, ” the 1973 seri that featured Lance Loud, whose g out ma him a gay in. The 1980s brought AIDS to the nversatn, wh movi such as “An Early Frost, ” an NBC movie about a gay lawyer who mt break the news about his AIDS diagnosis to his parents.

TV'S GAY CHARACTERS, BEFORE AND AFTER ELLEN

The same thg happened when ABC’s “thirtysomethg” beme the first seri to pict two gay men bed together 30 years ago, a dynamic that ed work officials to thk twice about approvg such storyl.