A gay character/plot issue

You're overthinking it. There's no reason why he needs a 'gay issue' at all. If he's gay and people talk about relationships and sex and it happens to be mentioned, great!

To be honest, I want to see more fiction where people *happen* to be LGTBQA, you know? It shouldn't be hidden, or coded, it should be as open and obvious as straightness tends to be, but there doesn't need to be subplot actively relating to his gayness.

Anninyn said:

To be honest, I want to see more fiction where people *happen* to be LGTBQA, you know?

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This.

OP, is it "important to the plot" that your straight characters are straight? A lot of people seem to treat straight as the "default" and consider making a character to be gay to be a choice that need justification, rather than considering it a coin flip of, "this char happens to be straight, this char happens to be gay, it'll make a difference to the plot if it happens to make a difference and if it doesn't it doesn't."

I'd rather see sexual orientation treated as a coin flip rather than something one needs a reason for. And if one considers that a reason is needed, then I'd like to see that logic applied to straight characters as well -- if queer characters need a reason to be queer, then hetero characters should need a reason to be hetero. There is no default humanity.

It's a non-issue. If it isn't important that a character is gay, then don't treat it as important, and your readers won't expect it to be important.

It is common for gay characters' sexuality to feature prominently in the plot, but this is partly a consequence of the lack of the dearth of gay characters in film and literature, and the attitude that any non-straight sexuality will stand out and have to be explained or justified in some way. And it can be annoying when an author makes a big deal about a character's sexuality when it isn't needed.

I love writing queer lit sometimes, but it would be great to have more non-queer novels casually feature LGBT characters without making a big deal about it.

I'd agree with the other posters who say you're overthinking it. If his being gay is of prime importance to the plot, then have at it, but if he just happens to be gay and it has nothing to do with the outcome of the story, why make a big deal of it?

seun said:

I'm feeling something along the lines of when a gay character features in fiction, their being gay plays a larger part in the story than I'm exploring in my tale. Does that make sense? In my case, I don't want his being gay to be any more of an issue than the hetro characters being hetro.

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I will qualify this by saying that I am straight myself, so there are people who are better able to chime in on the whole thing. In my current novels, one of the pov characters is gay. It's not a big deal, but I don't hide his orientation from the reader either. It's just a part of who he is.

I've run across people on writing sites ask why a character would "need" to be gay at all in this situation (or why I would need to let them know that he is). This sort of drives me nuts, and I answer by asking, "Why does a character need to be straight if it's not what the story is 'about?'"

They usually answer by muttering something about how they don't want to know what any character does in bed. If this is true, they won't like anything I write, because I do include sex (not graphic, but it's there) and thoughts about attraction in my stories, when relevant. And of course, they're also making the mistake of assuming that you can know what someone does in bed just from someone's orientation, and that orientation is just about what you do in bed.

Anninyn said:

To be honest, I want to see more fiction where people *happen* to be LGTBQA, you know? It shouldn't be hidden, or coded, it should be as open and obvious as straightness tends to be, but there doesn't need to be subplot actively relating to his gayness.

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This.