It’s Credited With Helping Gay People Come Out

For 24 years, "The Simpsons" has entertained countless fans all around the world and served as an inspiration for the current generation of primetime cartoons. According to a recent study, the cartoon has an even greater influence on gay males because it may encourage them to come out of the closet.

As people will see in a moment, The Simpsons has long attempted to strike a balance between acceptance and satire. It has done a lot through the years to demonstrate diversity in a variety of forms and punches up more often than it punches down. One of them was how it handled LGBT characters.

The show's gay themes and characters are so prevalent that a German author wrote a whole book about them, researching 70 gay characters and 490 sequences throughout the show's history. He said that in 2005, The Simpsons was the first program to commit an entire episode to the topic of gay marriage.

Erwin In het Panhuis, the show's author, even attributes the show's consistent and uplifting representation of gay characters and homosexuality in general with assisting gay people in coming out.