Bea Arthur's 'Maude' Had A Gay Best Friend 46 Years Ago - HuffPost

Bea Arthur's 'Maude' Had A Gay Best Friend 46 Years Ago  HuffPostBy the time Bea Arthur joined the cast of “The Golden Girls” in 1985, she’d already endeared herself to TV audiences as the protagonist of “Maude,” which had ended its CBS run nearly a decade prior. Like “Golden Girls,” “Maude” broke fresh ground in portraying hot-button issues such as racism, addiction and ― most famously ― abortion. As Seattle-based writer Matt Baume discovers, the sitcom (which aired from 1972 through 1978) also offered an ahead-of-its-time portrayal of a gay man less than five years after the 1969 Stonewall uprising helped make LGBTQ issues a larger part of the cultural...