“There’s a queer in my soap!”

What is interesting about the list, besides the fact that viewers will never have the opportunity to see Erica Kane floss her teeth as she whips a French poodle, is the positioning of homosexuality or its synedoche, “homosexual kissing.” The placement of “homosexual kissing” between “nudity” and “cruelty to animals” suggests that “cruelty to animals” is more acceptable an image than the dread representation of “clothed” same sex desire, and that the latter is somehow safer than full-scale “heterosexual” nudity. The reluctance to represent homosexuality and homosexual desire needs to be examined in relation to conventional soap opera narrative structure, institutional pressures, and the various contexts of reception.