The first LGBT character in western animation?

Although Korrasami was a milestone when it comes to LGBT representation in western animation aimed at children, there were a few shows that tackled such topics before. Some cited examples include Gargoyles, Braceface and 6teen, though only the latter two are explicit in the sense in that the characters are indentified as gay.

To make matters more complicated, animation history has several characters coded as gay, but not explicitly so. So what was the first explicitly LGBT that goes beyond just being identified as such?

Eneter Jet Groove a frankly underated French series about a bunch of criminals forced to serve as flight attendants. One of such criminals is Deedjee, who is gay and South Asian, so two minority points! While he is depicted as camp and often doesn’t get along with his straight companions, he is not portrayed as less of a criminal because of his sexuality and actually occasionally gets a love interest, like in one episode where he nearly manages to run away from the plane with another guy.

Unfortunately this series is nearly lost media, with only a few snippets in french surviving. I’ll see if I can contact RTP (the Portuguese channel where this series aired) for a release, but if not then please check the imdb. It’d be a shame if this treasure trove was permanently erased from existence.