Late (er) in life coming out...which soap characters would be suitable?

[Antoyne]

I totally forgot they made Doug gay in the finale for no reason 

[janea4old]

In 1977 the unhappily married Sharon Duval (Sally Stark) admitted to her dear friend Julie Williams that she was bisexual and was in love with her. I think Susan Seaforth Hayes has mentioned this in more than one interview, and she said that she would have been fine with Julie being bi, but the show decided not to go there.

According to welovesoaps,
the storyline was quickly wrapped up when problems broke out backstage between head writer Pat Falken Smith and the NBC top brass. 
https://www.welovesoaps.net/2008/07/gaylesbianbisexual-television.html 

[MichaelGL]

Julie being confused about her feelings for Sharon/towards women, while feeling like she's betraying Doug, would've been so angsty; I love it. 

[AbcNbc247]

From what I’ve read, Julie was actually pretty homophobic about Sharon’s love for her.

[janea4old]

@jam6242 What do you remember of the above-mentioned Sharon/Julie storyline?

And what was the approximate age of the characters at that time?

Edited January 20, 2022 by janea4old

[allmc2008]

A bit off topic but didn't Bell try to do gay stories on DOOL?

[Paul Raven]

Sally- Stark Sharon was 38 and SSH -Julie was 34

[Khan]

I wonder what her original plans for the storyline had been.  Did she intend for Sharon to be an unlikely spoiler in Doug and Julie's relationship?  Was Sharon eventually going to find love with another Salem resident?

[jam6242]

Re Sharon and Julie, can't say it was handled well.  Julie strongly rejected Sharon's advances and Sharon ended up slashing her wrists over it.  I don't think it was ever meant to be a serious relationship.  Julie had only recently finally married Doug and had no idea Sharon was interested in a romantic relationship with her.  I always had the impression that Sharon's husband Karl was also interested in Julie, and for some reason I thought Sharon and Karl were "swingers" and wanted Julie to participate.  Julie and Sharon did make up right before Sharon left town.  I remember Sharon giving Julie a brooch at that time.  I'm pretty sure it was all cut short because of fan hate mail.  This was around the same time the David/Valerie story was airing.

[Khan]

Between the Sharon Duval story and the David/Valerie story, not to mention the surrogate story w/ Doug, Pat Falken Smith was really trying to push the envelope.  It's just a shame TPTB panicked and cut it all short.

[DRW50]

I can see the layout for the Katherine and JoAnn relationship on Y&R (I assume the plan all along was for this to be a yearning but unbalanced relationship between two very lonely women and the conclusion was in the end likely going to be what happened onscreen, just that version was much more sped up), but the Sharon stuff baffles me in what the message or intent was going to be. If the idea was that Sharon would eventually accept herself and move on with her life, with Julie coming around to support her, I wish they had managed to work that in in a more subtle way - the audience likely still would have lashed out, but maybe not as vocally.

[Khan]

That's why I'd love to know what, if anything, PFS had planned for Sharon.  Because, from what I have read, I couldn't begin to guess where she might've been going with that character.