Sketch Comedy's Greatest Gay Hits

Recent American political scandals have brought to light that sometimes the most adamantly anti-gay politicians are themselves deeply closeted. British catchphrase-heavy sketch comedy show Little Britain tackled this hypocrisy with the character of Sir Norman Fry.

Fry is a conservative politician who continually finds himself embroiled in gay sex scandals, for which he apologizes alongside his family at press conferences. In each situation he presents a ridiculous excuse as his supportive wife stands by his side, struggling to maintain her countenance. In the clip below, Fry tries to explain how he managed to get caught having sex in a public restroom:

On the short-lived Acceptable.TV, a skit titled “Gayliens” presented a world where aliens land on earth, promising to share new technologies that will solve the world’s problems. However, because the alien representatives appear to be a same-sex couple, the humans who encounter them obsess over their sexuality. Although they are presented with technologies that could potentially change the course of history, our world leaders are only interested in making juvenile gay jokes about the aliens’ sex lives.

A similar dynamic can sometimes be found on The Ambiguously Gay Duo, an animated sketch that started on The Dana Carvey Show but continued for years afterwards on Saturday Night Live. The pair constantly make sexual innuendoes – both verbal and visual – that leave people wondering if the two costumed crime fighters are gay partners. In fact, their nemesis seems more concerned with outing the two as a couple than with taking over the world:

In 1991, a memorable Saturday Night Live parody ad used gay sexuality to spoof the heterosexual male perspective commonly seen in advertising. While popular beer commercials of the time featured spontaneous wet-and-wild pool parties filled with bikini-clad ladies, the Schmitts Gay beer ad featured an altogether different scenario when the cans were cracked open. Instead of good times with sexy women, Schmitts Gay sought to project an image that hunky men would be willing to party with average guys like Adam Sandler and Chris Farley if there was Schmitts Gay beer to be found. Interestingly, the ad parody aired at a time when major companies were afraid to openly target gay customers.