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Few writers in history have ever been 'politically correct' (a notion that rapidly changes in any case), and there's no reason to imagine that gay writers will ever suit their readers, especially since that readership is splintered into ghettos within ghettos.

There are sometimes concerns about being respectful with a gay character, and you either end up with a tiptoeing quality or an all-out cliche.

Perhaps no other body of literature is as subject to political pressures from within the community as gay fiction.

Gay writers now have both a sense of history and the fables that allows them to dwell in the realms of the ridiculous and at the same time talk seriously about things.

We don't really get to see gay characters who are completely open with their sexuality, but it doesn't define who they are.

And I'd like to believe that's true, you know, kind of showing gay people in this kind of light and - where it's not about that, it's just about the characters for the first time, like those shows were.

The media has gone through lots of things that make it a less foreign thing to have your lead character be gay.

I had played many gay characters before, but they were finite - guest characters in TV shows or characters in plays.

I grew up in a conservative small town, and the gay characters I saw on TV and in movies when I was growing up were all flamboyant and obnoxious and sometimes kind of annoying.

Not every gay person recites poetry or has read Keats. You can get readers through anything if the characters are complicated. You can't dismiss Josey Wales' quite liberal worldview.