Anthony Mackie seems pretty unhappy with people who want Sam and Bucky to be gay - The A.V. Club

There’s so many things that people latch on to with their own devices to make themselves relevant and rational…The idea of two guys being friends and loving each other in 2021 is a problem because of the exploitation of homosexuality.

Meanwhile, if Mackie’s whole point was just to say that he and Stan were trying to depict an intimate but platonic male friendship, he probably could have just said that without casting aspersions on people who interpret the relationship in other ways, or who might hope against hope to see the MCU deviate even slightly from its relentlessly straight presentation to date.

(Also, we have no idea where the whole “You can’t meet a male friend at a bar anymore!” angle comes from; it’s one of like five things in that response that felt extraordinarily “Not that there’s anything wrong with that,” despite the stated “purity” and “beauty” of homosexuality on Mackie’s part.).

Also weird: Mackie, in touching on this topic, pointedly acknowledged his Black Mirror episode “Striking Vipers,” which is about… a male friendship that develops explicit sexual elements