More SF
It’s implied in David Weber’s Honorverse that female bisexuality is the norm on Grayson. (A world with a 3:1 ratio of women to men.)
Lois McMaster Bujold also has the book Ethan of Athos, with the main character from a planet without women.
And Another Country.
One of Alan Dean Foster’s Spellsinger books includes a gay unicorn; it’s mentioned when Mudge asks him why he wasn’t fascinated by a virgin maiden like unicorns are supposed to be.
Beautiful book, but its been three or four years since I’ve read it and its still gives me the heebie jeebies. So wrong. And yet intriguing.
Robin Hobb’s three trilogies include a major gay or bi character (it’s never fully established which).
If the book I’m currently editing ever gets published, it also includes a major gay character. And I made gay marriage in my world legal.
In Diane Duane’s Tale of Five books, everybody is bisexual.
In the Sten series by Allan Cole and Chris Bunch, two minor characters are gay lovers ( universal among their species ).
Er, considering he falls in love with and marries Olivia at the end…
His sidekick/shipwreck companion Antonio, on the other hand, is very clearly aflame.
Wikipedia’s Fictional LGBT Characters category is prob’ly worth a look. As well as the gay comics characters site.
I read “The Odessa File” recently and was kind of surprised that one of the minor characters was gay.
That’s right; I had thought when I read the OP that I had never read a book with a gay main character, but Tom Ripley sure is gay, or at any rate bisexual (he’s married in one of the later books). That was kind of a theme with Highsmith; there was more than a bit of a gay subtext in “Strangers on a Train.” I think Highsmith herself was a lesbian.
I suspect Elliot in “The Razor’s Rdge” is gay, as was Somerset Maughm himself.
Of course that probably makes the book’s narrator gay as well, since he seems to be writing as himself. At any rate, the narrator is a writer and seems to travel in the appropriate social circles.
Some say that Antonio from The Merchant of Venice is gay, though I never saw it myself. Apparently it is the reason for his angsting at the beginning, because Bassanio has fallen in love with a woman.
It’s portrayed that way in the most recent film version (with Jeremy Irons and Joseph Fiennes in the roles). They share a romantic kiss before Bassanio leaves.
Really? I was thinking of seeing that movie when I heard it was being made but I never saw any ads and the IMDB doesn’t have an Australian film rating for it. Is there any reason for it to not be released in Australia? :dubious:
Coast Guard Captain Marian Alston, a lesbian who is the master of several martial arts, in the Nantucket Trilogy by S. M. Stirling, and her girlfriend/sidekick Swindapa, the woman from 1250 BC.
Try reading Plato’s Symposium for a very frank comic discussion of homosexual attraction. Key points: Alcibiades drunken decleration that he has the hots for Socrates, despite Socrates being the ugliest man in Athens, and Aristophanes’ comic legend on the origin of love, both hetero- and homosexual.
How about Xena and Gabrielle?
I opened this thread to mention Feist’s work. There’s a more openly gay character later in another related series of his, but I can’t recall the character’s name at the moment. I remember posting about him in a thread a loooong time ago, and giving kudos to Feist (one of my favorite SF authors) for being progressive. Then someone responded in that thread saying something to the effect of, “Um…Feist has been quoted confirming that Kulgan and Meecham were more than friends.” It was one of the more resounding “Duh!” moments I’ve ever had on The Dope, considering I started reading Feist when I was 12, and am still reading him to this day (Just bought Talon of the Silverhawk and King of Foxes on paperback weekend before last).
There’s also an openly gay character in Guy Gavriel Kay’s Tigana.
Melanie Rawn (I haven’t read her, but my girlfriend has) has openly gay characters in her later books.
And though downplayed in the movie, the lesbian relationship in the book Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistlestop Cafe is much more obvious.
Which brings to mind Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil as well.
I’m sure I’ll think of some others.
“The Kid” in Stephen King’s The Stand could qualify.
In the uncut version, he
Forces Trashcan Man to masturbate him to orgasm by sticking a gun in Trash’s rectum.
I suppose that one could argue that that was more based on circumstance, but I disagree.
glbtq’s encyclopedia has this thorough article about gay males in mystery fiction.
Black Jack Randall and Lord John Grey from Diana Gabaldon’s “Outlander” series are both gay.
Ruth and Idgie from “Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistlestop Cafe” were lesbians. Hollywood sanitized the relationship a bit in the movie, but the undertones were there.