Gay subtext?

I just watched this movie for the fourth time last month and was really surprised by a scene that had passed before my eyes three times before but that I had never really caught on to until now. It's the scene that introduces us to the vampires' lair (which is a VERY well-done scene, by the way) and has Amilyn delivering some creepy line about sleeping through thunder or whatnot, and it struck me that every time I had watched this movie before, I had confused this particular scene with another one a little later where Cassandra finds herself inside that lair. So I had mistakenly assumed that Amilyn had been speaking to Cassandra. It wasn't until watching the scene the fourth time that I finally noticed that the hand Amilyn lifts from the coffin and kisses is black-gloved and is attached to an arm in a man's suit - and obviously belongs to Lothos.

Now, I realize that Lothos and Amilyn come from many centuries in the past, and furthermore that they almost certainly weren't American originally. I understand that if foreigners can have radically different social customs, then vampires' cultural differences must be more radical still. But I couldn't help wondering after finally catching on to that scene: are Lothos and Amilyn supposed to be lovers?

If you look at other scenes in the movie, this starts to look really plausible. Lothos and Amilyn spend much of their time in the lair alone, with their "converted" followers roaming the streets after dark. Amilyn has some stereotypically gay mannerisms that would have been acceptable to depict in the early 1990s, such as being petty and overly concerned about his clothing. In the scene where Lothos is scolding Amilyn about getting some of the "young ones" killed, the pair sound like a married couple bickering over their children. And on top of all that, Lothos appears to harbor a really disturbing (and again, stereotypical) sadomasochistic streak: when he sees Buffy stab Amilyn and leave him for dead, his only response is to smile and ask Buffy if she enjoyed it; it's pretty clear from his glee that HE'S the one who enjoyed it. So I think, if you read between the lines, it's possible to interpret Lothos as a murderous bisexual, and Amilyn as his sex slave.

And if this interpretation is true? Well, I'm not really bothered by it. If it IS true, it's rather surprising that the subtext somehow made it into a movie like this, especially in Hollywood's pre-PHILADELPHIA era. And if it was completely unintentional, well....that's a little hard to believe. Kind of paradoxical, that.