One of TV's mommest moms! (Image via CBS)

June Lockhart is, at 99 years old, many things — Lassie's mom, the Lost in Space mom, a Miss Universe co-host, a rare Hollywood survivor with a 1930s movie credit to her name — but one thing people sometimes forget is that she has always been open-minded.

My Exhaustive History of LGBTQ+ TV History HERE!

Not only is she a lifelong David Bowie fan (discovering his music when she was something like 50), she apparently is a longtime LGBTQ+ ally, as demonstrated by a fascinating 1970 clip from The Virginia Graham Show.

Graham was a trailblazer for women on TV, a host of multiple shows. She was always loud, sometimes funny and yet slightly holier than thou. Baby Rosie O'Donnell loved her. But in this clip, in which she hosts out gay Rev. Troy Perry (still with us at 84), she reveals a distressingly antique set of views on the topic of homosexuality. Among them, she thinks being gay is against nature, a mental illness, something that should be cured and something that should be private. (It should be noted her views, while sounding awful today, were still left of center at the time.)

Still, she gets credit for even talking about being gay on daytime TV in 1970 — it was an exceedingly rare topic on the airwaves at the time.

@boyculturedotcom On September 7, 1970, this on-fire gay man read host Virginia Graham for filth over her ignorant views on gay people … dear! #virginiagraham #gay #queer #lgbt #lgbtq #troyperry #boyculture ♬ original sound - Matthew Rettenmund/BoyCulture

Best of all is how her guests June Lockhart (and also the hilarious comic Art Metrano, who just died in 2021) chide Graham, challenging her beliefs. And the audience seems quite open to the opposition.

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