Thanks in no small part to freshmen series like The New Normal and Partners as well as the continued efforts of HBO and Showtime, TV is really gay now—in fact, the gayest it's ever been. The news comes from GLAAD's 17th annual report on the number of homosexual and bisexual characters appearing on television, which found that during the 2012-2013 season, some 4.4 percent of actors will be portraying a gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender character, sometimes even on shows other than True Blood, a number that's up from the 2.9 percent in 2011 that carried with it the added insult of Work It.
While ABC now boasts the highest number of gay characters on network TV—besting previous champ Fox, even as it continues to get gimmes like American Dad's "omni-sexual" alien Roger—and CBS earned the accolade of "most improved" for the network's increased efforts to diversify, currently no network is gayer than Showtime, which leads the pack with 12 LGBT characters (even after losing like six in one fell swoop when it canceled The United States Of Tara). Yet while the trend promisingly continues to move upward for the inclusion of more gay people and people of color, according to GLAAD's report, still nobody continues to get more TV work than straight white people. Congratulations again, straight white people! [via Associated Press]