Board Thread:Speculation House/@comment-226878-20140818053714

Monty Oum stated on AfterBuzz that characters who are not heterosexual may be among the cast but will not be unveiled until their sexuality can present itself in a comfortable and natural way. This is most likely to avoid the appearance of shoehorning a token queer into the show for ratings' sake.

Of course, it's kind of a double-edged sword. If they spend too much time delving into their personal details, it may come off like they're trying to explain why people are queer. One thing that LGBT community hates it's when people try to explain their existence because generally the opinion is that once you know the cause of something that means it can be "fixed."

I'm personally an advocate of the idea that people are not inherently sexual or asexual. As children, much of our motivation comes from a sexual aspect that we're simply not aware of because we lack that self-awareness (that lack is the reason children cannot give consent, because they do not possess the necessary understanding of what they're consenting to). Coming into adulthood, that sexual aspect begins to come more to the fore of our priorities whether for gratification or procreation. One of the most controversial statements about the queer community has been that they are deviants who only care about their own sexual gratification. However, gratification is not only sexual. And not everyone experiences "sex drive" in the same way. Some might even argue they have no sex drive.

In my opinion, one of the surest ways to guarantee people do not look on this as a case of shoehorning is to avoid limiting the LGBT's representation within this show to lesbian, bi-curious, or transvestite. It seems, at least to me, that those are three which occur most often in media. Transvestism is often treated light-heartedly by audiences and with humor while bi-curiousness is typically shrugged off altogether. Lesbianism on the other hand is usually acceptable if only to a deluded male community. It is much more difficult to write properly for characters who are transgender, transsexual, or men who like men. Most commonly, these types have been treated comedically.

No matter how this subject is approached in stories in media of any form, there is no easy or correct way of doing it though there is clearly a wrong way. I personally don't know which method may result in less backlash from the audience. The people who long for like-gender pairings would applaud their appearance in the show no matter what. People who are against it would snigger no matter what. People who are indifferent would likely be irritated toward the "token" method. The LGBT community may be irritated toward the "thought-out" method. Of course, there's no scientific way to know for sure, as far as I know. 