Gay pornography

Gay pornography is the representation of sexual activity between males. Its primary goal is sexual arousal in its audience. Softcore gay pornography also exists; it at one time constituted the genre, and may be produced as beefcake pornography for heterosexual female and homosexual male consumption.

Although pornography has usually focused on heterosexuality, due to the prevalence of the heterosexual orientation, explicit gay material has a long history as well, which reaches back to Greek antiquity, if not to prehistory. Every medium has been used to represent sexual acts between men. However, gay pornography in the modern world is mostly concentrated in the making of home videos (including DVDs), cable broadcast and emerging video on demand and wireless markets, as well as images and movies for viewing on the Internet.

Homoeroticism has been present in photography and film since their invention. During much of that time, any sexual depiction had to remain underground because of obscenity laws. In particular, gay material might constitute evidence of an illegal act under sodomy laws in many jurisdictions. This is no longer the case in the United States, since such laws were ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 2003 in Lawrence v. Texas.

However, hardcore pornographic motion pictures (stag films, as they were called prior to their legalization in 1970) were produced relatively early in the history of film. The first known pornographic film appears to have been made in Europe in 1908. The earliest known film to depict hardcore gay (and bisexual) sexual activity was the French film Le ménage moderne du Madame Butterfly, produced and released in 1920. Most historians consider the first American stag film to be A Free Ride, produced and released in 1915. But in the United States, hardcore gay sexual activity did not make it onto film until 1929's The Surprise of a Knight.

...
Wikipedia