I read someplace that Liberace, while gay, did not actually HAVE relations with an actual man until after 1980, the year his mother died. After she died, he kind of went wild. So when he sued that paper, he may have been gay but did not actually act out on it. Technically: not gay!
"What Makes A Man, " an episode of the 1970’s show Room 222 had the students ragging on a guy suspected of being gay. The principal asks “Do we have one or two problems? Is the boy really a homosexual?”
In the reruns, that scene was totally cut.
As I recall it was (of course) Wojo who arrested him. Wojo was not a bad cop, but he was very uncomfortable with gays. But he didn’t arrest the cross-dresser because he thought he was homosexual, more because he thought he was doing some kind of soliciting/mugging scam. Having gotten in trouble for false arrests before Wojo looks up a statute that says something resembling that as being illegal, so Barney just says, “Ok, book him…”
Don’t wanna start a GD but no, Luger was old-school but he was not a racist asshole. Besides, it wasn’t Luger who told Barney to fire Zitelli (the gay cop), it was Lt. Scanlon, the Internal Affairs cop (who was a racist asshole).
I just listened to an old (1952) episode of Dragnet (radio) titled “The Big Almost No-Show” (all Dragnet titles were “The Big” something), and the show seemed clearly to be implying that the case involved a homosexual couple. But there was nothing direct about it - it just involved a missing man, who was an interior decorator, kept his apartment extremely neat (the cops called in the landlady to ask her if there was maid service in the apartment house, but there wasn’t) and whose best friend was an old Navy buddy, to whom the missing man frequently lent money, clothing and his car (yes, the Navy buddy was the murderer). You can listen to it here http://www.greatdetectives.net/detectives/dragnet-big-show/
Hail Ants wrote: “They even listed a ‘Gay Relations Technical Consultant’ in the end credits of these episodes.” I gotta admit, I giggled a little at that. (Thinking that the “consultant” would explain the mechanics.)
There’s a bizarre 1960’s anti-pedophile instructional film called Boys Beware that states all homosexuals are also pedophiles. In one section a teenage who was molested by a gay man is stated to have been given “probation” after the gay man was arrested which makes me wonder if they tagged victims as “accomplices” back then too.
Which can complicate things in the other direction as well - I really DO fit the entire description your father gave, but (harmless) mistakes have been made from time to time. 
It’s really obvious (in today’s world, at least) that Brandon and Phillip, the main characters in “Rope”, were a gay couple.
Since the thread’s been bumped, I may as well note that just within the last few weeks it’s been officially revealed that The Professionals was one of Margaret Thatcher’s favourite TV series. Along with (famously) Yes Minister and (altogether more obliquely) Cannon. But no word on what she made of that particular episode.
From the files of Nick Danger, Third Eye:
I trust I do not need to explain the definition of “punk” in this context.
And wasn’t there an episode where Marty gets busted by Wojo, nominally for marijuana possession, while a Russian defector from the USSR is seeking asylum to escape persecution? And Barney explains that defectors can’t be granted asylum for a frivolous reason, and the Russian doesn’t understand “frivolous”, and Barney gives the example of, say, wanting to marry an American woman, and the defector laughs and says no, he’s not “freevolos”, he’s homosexual? And Marty in the lockup starts singing “My Country 'Tis Of Thee”, with satirical intent? And later in the episode an embarrassed Wojo is making clear to the Russian that he “likes girls”, and the Russian laughs and says “Ah, you are freevolos”?
So IIRC, while Barney Miller definitely portrayed homophobic attitudes, the portrayal was frequently accompanied by a rather strong subtext that homophobic attitudes are bullshit.
Toned down, though, to the point of spoiling the movie, or so MacLaine felt in one of her memoirs. In the play, there are some subtle hints of Shirley being in love with Audrey; little things like baking cookies for her or giving back rubs, or some such. Minor, but her babbling confession at the end doesn’t just come out of nowhere as it did in the movie, and the evil little girl didn’t spin something from whole cloth and then turn out to be right, or sort of right, completely by accident.
The only American movie I could find by doing some Googling that had a relatively sympathetic gay character before the 1970 film The Boys in the Band was the 1965 film Inside Daisy Clover (where the character was played by Robert Redford):
But that’s only American films, which seems to be what is being discussed here. Was the same true in the rest of the world? I found the following list, also by Googling. Most of them I never even heard of before. Does anyone know about the treatment of homosexuality in them?:
Barney Miller is definitely of its time, and there are some aspects that are kind of cringe-inducing these days (their episode dealing with marital rape is a stand-out in this regard). But their portrayal of gay issues, while indulging in some stereoptypes for comic effect, was mostly nuanced and sympathetic. At least as far as I’m able to judge as a straight guy.
Very early on (possibly the first or second episode featuring Marty), while Wojo was openly flustered and threatened by the existence of gay men, Yemana’s responses were things like “It’s none of my business,” and “It takes all kinds of people to make a world.” Even that early, there was the subtext that Wojo’s attitude was old-fashioned and foolish.
Marty’s partner, Darryl Driscoll, who was much less stereotyped and more grounded, had problems with his ex-wife not allowing him to see their son. That episode included an awkward but largely respectful conversation in which Wojo tried to grapple with the idea of a gay man having a child.
As mentioned, Officer Zatelli was a closeted gay policeman. He confided his orientation to Barney, but no one else, until that same episode with Driscoll’s ex-wife, where, in response to hearing a homophobic diatribe about how gay men were weird and couldn’t be trusted, finally lost it and burst out with “I’m gay!” (Marty’s reaction: “That took guts!”). He was later accidentally outed by Wojo, and Barney stood up for him when Lt. Scanlon wanted him fired.
Not a crime drama, but medical drama 'Marcus Welby" had a few episodes that depicted homosexuality negatively. In the 1973 episode The Other Martin Loring had a character confess to being a homosexual, and good Dr. Welby assuring him that with treatment and therapy, he could become normal (i.e., heterosexual) and lead a normal, hetero life. The episode got a lot of flack from gay rights groups about the message it sent.
Around the same time period, the Angie Dickinson’s series “Police Woman” also had a few eeeevil lesbians in an episode, Flowers of Evil. In this case, the women in question weren’t arrested for being gay, but they were running an old-age home where they were fleecing the elderly people in their care. However, the women were depicted as such stereotypically cartoonish lesbians that it also sparked some protests as well.
In general, homosexuality wasn’t overtly referenced in television shows, but at least in the 70s, cop/detective shows would hint that a character (almost always a bad guy) was gay to drive home the point of home amoral and twisted a character really was. We TV has lately been re-rujnning episodes of “Charlie’s Angels” and it’s almost astonishing how many episodes feature criminal women making veiled come-ons to the Angels. One of the most blatant is the infamous “Angels in Chains” episode - the Angels get themselves arrested to investigate a prison facility. As they are being processed, they are instructed to shower and a prison matron is shown openly leering at the (offscreen) women as they shower.
Gardenia, actually. I can always hear Lee Patrick’s voice saying that word.
There was a scene later in the movie where Brigid says something to Joel about how he could “get around him like you did that guy in Istanbul” (paraphrasing) which infuriated Joel. This was in the scene with the two of them and Sam, just before the police arrived, in the middle of the night. Also, near the end Gutman tells Wilmer that he is like a son to him, “but, well, you can always get another son.” Implications are pretty clear without being so obvious as to require censorship.
To get back to the OP, I think the answer is no, cop shows did not show cops arresting men for being gay or for illegal gay behavior, not because they were being kind and sensitive, but because they didn’t want to talk openly about such things.
Someone mentioned the movie The Detective, which came out in 1968. A big part of the plot is the fact that William Windom’s character was a gay man who had fought his inclinations until he gave in and went down to the piers in New York, and saw (horrors!) men sitting close together and maybe touching each other affectionately. He didn’t want to be one of those men! So he killed someone or something. Societal attitudes had a lot to answer for in those days. How many suicides due to self-loathing or fear of exposure or both?
*Boys in the Band *has also been mentioned, and as sympathetic. I didn’t find it so. It was unflinching, but was there a single person in that party who was actually happy or at least comfortable with himself? I don’t remember that, although it’s been a long time.
It appears that, relative to their times, The Detective, The Boys in the Band, Inside Daisy Clover, Victim, and Barney Miller were sympathetic to homosexuals. Attitudes to homosexuality have been slowly and steadily changing for at least the past sixty years. (And it was before then too, but it was hinted at rather than mentioned, so it’s harder to tell.) You have to judge things by the time when they were released. Wait till you see how weird our attitudes today towards various things look like sixty years from now.
Wasn’t there another episode (or maybe the same one where Zatelli’s story is told), where an undercover cop busts someone in a gay bar for some crime or other, and it’s revealed the officer was undercover at the bar. Wojo makes the remark to the guy along the lines of “I can’t believe anyone would think you were gay,” and the undercover cop, who isn’t displaying any open signs of being gay like Marty, just looks at Wojo and says, “Que sara sara” and exits, leaving Wojo with a “Wait, what?” look on his face as he realizes not all gay people are flaming.
Slightly off subject (as they were simply entertainments) but the radio shows** Round The Horne** and Beyond Our Ken (both titles referencing the host Kenneth Horne) were huge comedy shows in the UK (1958 - 68, which was, at least at the beginning, pre-TV for most people). They had massive audiences and prime time family listening spots, and featured Kenneth Williams and Hugh Paddick as a pair of (sorry but there really isn’t another phrase) screaming queens,** Julian and Sandy**, with double entendres and sexual innuendo throughout and, inexplicably, Polari words and phrases used extensively (Julian and Sandy - Wikipedia). For example, from the sketch Bona Law (Bona = good) where Julian and Sandy are running a legal firm:
HORNE: Will you take my case?
JULIAN: Well, it depends on what it is. We’ve got a criminal practice that takes up most of our time.
HORNE: Yes, but apart from that, I need legal advice.
SANDY: Ooh, isn’t he bold?
(In case the reference isn’t obvious, homosexual acts were indeed a criminal practice in the UK at the time).
It was so openly (and joyously) gay in a non-gay world, it’s had to imagine anything similarly discordant happening today. Bless them. So really, it’s the polar opposite of “go after gay people for being gay.”
Re crime dramas (back on point), an episode of Minder from 1980 is described thus:
“Terry guards an antique shop owned by Alex, a friend of Arthur, after two men demand protection money. He isn’t keen on the job as he has to share a flat with Jim, a gay man, Alex’s partner. He soon discovers that the story of the protection racket is a fabrication, that Alex is also gay and that his ex-wife Gloria set up the ‘accident’ that has put Alex in hospital. (Episode title spoofs the 1972 television play Whose Life is it Anyway?)”
- and while the handling was gauche (“You’ll like him, he’s a real man’s man” and so on) it wasn’t nasty.
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