Something I wrote on Reddit on a thread asking 'what's your DC hot take??', because if you're gonna kick a hornet's nest, kick it with your best steel-toed boots and then smile:
Booster's queer. That man hasn't come across as straight-- ever. Like even when I started reading DC in 2003, he came across as queer to me, pretty much from his inception. Seriously. He comes across like someone closeted and decidedly not-straight who just stays in the closet initially because it was a very bad time to be anything other than heterosexual when he landed in the past and later because it's habit and expected of him.
I don't think he's gay, I think he probably leans pretty pansexual or maybe even demisexual, but any which way, you'll never convince me he's not at least a little bit queer. He's had one in-universe romance that hasn't been retconned (Firehawk) in his entire time existing and one that was a joke and maybe not even real canon (Gladys). After almost four decades. His thing with Firehawk lasted, I think, like less than a year, too. I'm pretty sure you can count his on-panel kisses on one hand, but not more than two. He's never had a 'morning after' scene. The one seriously emotionally intimate relationship he has is with another guy. When he does flirt or attempt to, it comes off as being awkward and a bit desperate and a bit like a man who is kinda using it as cover.
And like-- that really makes way more sense for him than anything otherwise. I'd sincerely hope by the 25th century that we'd stop giving a damn who loves or wants whomever else based on gender presentation. It also makes for a pretty compelling tale, a guy getting dropped into the middle of the AIDS epidemic learning a very quick and ugly lesson about what happens to queer folk in this time period.
I dunno how hot a take this is, though, because at least some people up top agree (he's canonically hooked up with Ted in Teen Titans Go! and like-- any time Tom Taylor writes them, he all but says it aloud), but if TPTB were brave, they'd finally confirm it mainline. Like you don't even have to ship him with Ted (though that's my preference), just confirm he's queer.
Here's my essay. What's my grade? LOL!
Since it's relevant, tho, here's a few pieces I wrote from a long email back and forth (since us old people still do that) with another very long-time fan of his a couple weeks ago:
But anyway, to me, he acts about like how a kid who got dropped into the 80s during the height of the AIDS panic and rampant homophobia and the wholesale death of gay men might, especially if he were queer himself. I'd probably try to straight-wash myself, too, in his boots. (I remember that time period, if distantly. I didn't realize I was queer myself until I was well into my 20s, despite falling in very desperate and intense love with another girl when I was 12. I do remember being in high school when a boy was murdered for being queer by being tortured and left tied to a fence to die, though. It was that kind of world back then for people like us. In some places, it still is.)
Still, where Booster fails at any hetero romance (oh god does he), he's so devoted to Ted that a big part of his second solo was dedicated to him either trying to save the man or actively mourning him. It's heartbreaking and amazing and really actually quite good stuff, from a literary POV. Whether DC meant it or not, somehow they managed to write one of the greatest love stories I've ever seen in a comic across most of twenty years, no kidding, and I've read a lot across a lot of companies, even back when I was a twelve year old girl and ridiculed for it. And not just a great queer love story, it's a great love story period. A person can make a credible argument for it being a one-sided -- romantic and therefore non-platonic -- love, but it's pretty hard to argue it's not a very intense one regardless.
I guess what I'm trying to say is: This is another read on him. And I think also a very valid one. He's one hell of an amazing character, I wish DC had handled him half as well post-Flashpoint than they did pre-Flashpoint, and I don't think a queer reading of him detracts anything from how amazing he is. If anything, I think it makes the older stuff several shades deeper (and so, so relatable, god), and I think if they decided to write him as explicitly queer now, not too many people would actually be all that surprised. With or without Ted. I can't really identify with Alan Scott, love him though I do, even though I can acknowledge that a generation of gay men likely could quite strongly.
But I can identify with Booster Gold, who grew up poor and wrecked his future in part for love of family, who clawed his way out of poverty and fell back into it, who has brilliant and shining moments of courage and heart, and moments where he lands on his face, who was tough enough to survive a lot of shit but devastatingly vulnerable to exploitation, and who looks like a fellow queer kid who might've fallen for his best friend, but was surrounded by homophobia and hate and terror and buried that part of himself because the alternative might have been getting beaten and left tied to a fence to die.
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