GLAAD on gay TV characters this season...

I urge you to read a terrific round-table discussion on the state of gays on television on AfterElton.com which includes thoughts from the site's editor, Michael Jensen, Bryan Fuller, producer of NBC's "Heroes," actor Jack Plotnick, and GLAAD Media Director Damon Romine.
I have excerpted comments made by Damon (pictured, right) because of his overall view but the conversation between the four principals is quite compelling.
Says Romine: "There’s been kind of a lot of anticipation this year, from all the visibility from "Brokeback Mountain" and "Transamerica" and a lot of discussion about [gay people’s] lives on TV with the election and all. If you look at the numbers of scripted characters on TV, though, LGBT characters only represent 1.3 percent of all characters currently on broadcast networks. That’s pretty low and not representative of us at all.
There is "Brothers & Sisters," however, which is telling an incredible and inclusive story, especially in comparison to what else is on. And there’s "The Class," which has a leading gay character. And gay characters are fairly well-represented on unscripted shows. As far as gay and lesbian youth, there’s been improvement, with shows like" Desperate Housewives" and "The War at Home" and "South of Nowhere," which features two teenaged lesbian characters.

Even on daytime television, on shows like "General Hospital" and "All My Children," the gay characters are members of the family. … In all the 50 years [of daytime soap operas], this is the first time that they’ve included gay characters [as] core members of the central family. [Editors note: All My Children just introduced a transgender character on the show.] Now that that’s happened, it will be hard to get rid of them.
Usually with gay characters on soap operas, they’d have their story lines around for a week or two, and then they’d go away. Bianca on "All My Children" is the daughter and one of the main characters on the show now. Of all the people on the show, she’s kind of considered the moral compass. And when you have a gay character and make her the moral compass, that’s really important."