In 1975, the year "Saturday Night Live" premiered, nearly 70% of Americans said they believed that homosexuality was always wrong.
That figure would only rise over the next decade, a National Opinion Research Center poll found, peaking in 1987 at 75%. So it’s likely unsurprising that most mainstream comedies presented queer people pretty one-dimensionally in the ‘70s and ‘80s, often as victims of brutal crimes — an implicit risk of their “gay lifestyle,” the subtext whispered — or, frequently, depicted as reductive versions of sex workers living on the fringes.
