I love The Golden Girls.
Ya’ll don’t have any idea how fucking brave and needed these plot lines were.
This was before Ellen came out.
This was before civil unions.
This was before Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.
This was when your ass could be fired, blacklisted, and shunned with no legal protections for even being hinted at being gay.
And the Golden Girls said “Fuck you, Fuck this, we’re doing it anyway.”
I think it should be noted that Blanche’s quote about AIDS is also “It is not god punishing people for their sins” and that the episode also deals with slutshaming.
I don’t know if people realize how much activism these women did for gay right and during the aids crisis. If you think about it they were all long established in Hollywood and Broadway. They had tons of friends personally affected and dealing with the aids crisis. Estelle Getty lost a nephew. I think they helped plant seeds in people who watched Golden Girls that helped make things a little more normalized and mainstream.
Estelle Getty didn’t just lose her nephew, she personally cared for him prior to his death as the disease progressed. she also lost her close friend, Court Miller, to the disease, and helped to open a hospice center for AIDS patients in her nephew’s hometown.
