Back when film and TV censors banned overtly gay or bi portrayals, what were "coded" gay characters?
They were roles like this one: Ernie Kovacs' famous "sissy poet" Percy Dovetonsils, a stock character on his comedy TV shows starting in 1950. "Coded gays" piled up so many of the era's popular stereotypes (usually of gay men) that the viewer knew exactly what was being hinted at, though the script could never state it openly.
Usually, Percy lisped bad poetry to the viewer on a set depicting his Greenwich Village apartment. But in this clip (from Kovacs' NBC morning show, and therefore more rambling than his primetime routines), Percy reads to us from his new book about outdoor fashions for men of an "artistic" nature who like to go hunting.