Ten Surprising Gay Sex Scenes

Hollywood producers and directors have a long tradition of shying away from gay male sex scenes – even as they labor valiantly to insert lesbian sex in places in the most ridiculous of places. Nina had lesbian sex in Black Swan to show how obsessed she was with herself? Really, Darren Aronofsky? Couldn’t you just come out and say, “This is how we got financing. A movie about ballet? I mean, are you kidding? Of course, we had to do this!”

But every now and then, a gay character does manage to see some action on TV or in the movies, as we’ve documented before in our articles Gay Sex Scenes That Made Movie History and TV's Most Influential Gay Sex Scenes – and sometimes it even gets surprisingly steamy!

(My personal vote for the single hottest gay sex scene ever seen on television? This very NSFW 2006 scene from the Showtime series Sleeper Cell, co-starring uber-hottie Michael Rady. The hottest movie sex scene ever? Either the one in Priest or any of a number of scenes in Maurice.)

So what gay sex scenes have surprised us lately? The following scenes aren’t necessarily all “hot,” but they definitely had eyebrows lifting on the foreheads here at AfterElton.com:

Jim Carrey Getting Very Personal in I Love You, Phillip Morris: Despite reports that Jim Carrey’s gay caper comedy was having its gay sex scenes edited for its American release, that turned out not to be the case (according to the co-directors). Within the first ten minutes, we saw Carrey drenched in sweat, banging another guy (who enthusiastically asked him to, um, well, not stop). It wasn’t quite sexy, but it effectively announced to the audience: “This is a gay movie – get used to it.”

The big gay reveal in I Love You, Phillip Morris

Ian Coming Out on Top in Shameless: Showtime’s remake of the U.K. show Shameless is already on record as having the single funniest sex-related line of dialogue in recent memory: in the first season’s seventh episode, when Kash’s wife catches her husband on a video camera having sex with Ian, she says, "I should probably turn it off. But then I'd miss the part where you take it up the ass from a teenage boy. There it is, Billy Elliot cornholing the father of my children."

Kash and wife review the tape

We don’t see the scene in question – which is a good thing, because both the character and the actor are under age 18 – but in the ninth episode, after Ian starts hooking up with Mickey. We see them together in a brief sex scene, with the much more age-appropriate Mickey moaning, “Harder! Harder!” pretty much specifying exactly which position Ian prefers to take, at least with Kash and Mickey.

Talbot Getting “Staked” on True Blood: The single most surprising sex scene in recent memory? Probably the one where Eric stakes Talbot – in more ways than one! Right after having full on sex, Eric, um, penetrates him again, slightly higher up, with an actual wooden stake this time. And any idea that this isn’t one of the gayest, most provocative TV shows ever went right out the window.

Vampires Eric and Talbot