Gay sex porn

Gay pornography is the representation of sexual activity among males, with the primary goal of sexual arousal in its audience. There is also a tradition, and continuing considerable output, of lesbian pornography. However, the term gay pornography is rarely intended to encompass this.

Although pornography has usually represented the heterosexual orientation of the dominant culture, gay explicit material has a long history, reaching back to Greek Antiquity, if not to prehistory. Practically every medium has been used to represent all-male sexual acts. Nowadays, however, the gay porn industry is mostly concentrated in the making of home videos, DVDs cable broadcast and emerging VOD and wireless markets, as well as images (still and moving) for viewing on the Internet. Gay porn constitutes a disproportionately large part of the pornography industry. It has also attracted much less attention from the anti-pornography movement than has its straight counterpart.

During the 1960s, a series of United States Supreme Court rulings created a more liberalized legal environment that allowed the commercialization of pornography. MANual Enterprises v. Day, 370 U.S. 478 (1962) was the first decision by the United States Supreme Court which held that magazines consisting largely of photographs of nude or near-nude male models are not obscene within the meaning of 18 U.S.C. § 1461. It was the first case in which the Court engaged in plenary review of a Post Office Department order holding obscene matter "nonmailable." The case is notable for its ruling that photographs of nude men are not obscene, an implication which opened the U.S. mail to nude male pornographic magazines, especially those catering to gay men.

Wakefield Poole's Boys in the Sand, starring Casey Donovan, can be considered one of the first gay porn feature films along with the works of filmakers such as Pat Rocco and the Park Theatre, Los Angeles, California, circa 1970. Boys in the Sand opened in a theater in New York City in December 1971 and played to a packed house with record breaking boxoffice receipts, preceding Deep Throat, the first commercial straight porn film in America, which opened in June 1972. This success launched gay pornographic film as a popular phenomenon.

The production of gay porn films expanded during the 1970s. A few studios released films for the growing number of gay adult theatres, where men could also have sexual encounters. Often, the films reflected the sexual liberation that gay men were experiencing at the time, depicting the numerous public spaces where men engaged in sex: bathhouses, sex clubs, beaches, etc. Most of the productions used a cast of youthful, muscular and hairy men, which would become a hallmark of the gay erotic aesthetic of the decade.

The 1970s also saw the rise of gay publishing with After Dark and Michael's Thing. During this time many more magazines were founded, including In Touch and Blueboy. Playgirl, ostensibly produced for women, was purchased and enjoyed by gay men and feature full frontal nudity (the posing straps and fig leafs were removed).

The primary audience of gay pornography consists of gay and bisexual men, although not all men who have sex with men identify as "gay" or "bisexual", and questioning men may also be interested.