We’ve got all these shows lately that do this queerbaiting thing. The characters flirt with their eyes and get all up into each other’s personal space and produce homosocial tension you can feel on Saturn, but then when you call the creators on it, they’re like, “Naaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaw, they’re just friends!”
This is what Gene Roddenberry said about Kirk/Spock slash and Star Trek when he got asked that question:
“Yes, there’s certainly some of that — certainly with love overtones. Deep love. The only difference being, the Greek ideal— we never suggested in the series— physical love between the two. But it’s the— we certainly had the feeling that the affection was sufficient for that, if that were the particular style of the 23rd century.”
The dude who lived through the most conservative period in US history and created a TV series that was, by this point, a cultural icon was willing to go there. ”We never meant to suggest it on TV, but sure, it could happen.”
40 years later, and our progress so far is Jack Barrowman and Teen Wolf.
(PS: That quote from Roddenberry can be found in William Shatner’s autobiography, Where No Man, which contains the transcript of the interview.)