Years Earlier

[Smartboy]

According to my observations, it was not until the eighties that it became the rather rule rather than the exception for homosexuality to get mentioned on a TV show. I would say that it took until the nineties for it to be common for a show to have a main character who was gay. However, now that I am hooked up to Amazon Prime, I recently bought the first season of an animated series called "Wait Till You Father Gets Home". I have already watched some of the episodes. For those of you who do not know, this show came out in the early seventies and it was like a toned down version of "All in the Family". The main character on this show owned a business that sold restaurant supplies. His company owned one truck and the man who drove it was a Jew. He retired. To avoid being called a bigot, the head of the company tried to hire another minority to be the new truck drive. He got applicants from people of all different racial, religious and ethnic minorities. Too bad he only had one position open! While the man was in his office, a very feminine guy walked in. He tried to explain to the boss that my hiring a gay man for the job, that could serve as his token minority. Needless to say, this man did not get the job! I would be willing to bet that he was a one-time character that I will never see again on the show. I am just surprised that, this early in the game they would have a character who would use the word gay and act the way that this man acted. By the way, if anyone here would like to read more of my words of wisdom about "Wait Till You Father Gets Home", he or she can go over to the "Gimme a Break!" page of this site. The most recent thread on that page is by me. The title of this show is that thread's namesake.