From Current TV, we're happy to bring you that rarest of delights: Reporting on gaming from a non-gaming outlet that's reasoned, competent and (wonder of wonders) well-researched. The story of GayGamer is told by those who breathe life into the site, showing not only why they're an important part of gaming culture, but what drove them to stick together in the first place. You can find it right after the jump.

The only downside is that the section on homophobia makes the community look so bad; but honestly, it's only bashing those of us that deserve it. ... You know what? We're kicking homophobes out of "us." We're officially making them "them." Sorry guys. Leave your fake guitars with Shelia on the way out.

The Singapore Media Developmental Authority has reversed its decision to ban Mass Effect from the country. The game will go on sale next week and have an M18 rating. According to The Strait Times, the Board of Film Censors will selectively use game ratings on high-profile games until January, when they expect to initiate a game classification system.

The decision to ban the game earlier this week spurred from a lesbian love scene found in BioWare's anticipated RPG. The Strait Times also noted that Assassin's Creed was released this week with a rating for graphic violence.

If a human female and a humanoid alien who is classified as female want to express their love in a physical manner, who are we to interrupt the natural order of the universe? According to Singapore newspaper The Straits Times, the government's Media Development Authority has banned BioWare's Mass Effect from sale in the country.

As reported by Reuters, Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said, "the city-state should keep its conservative values and not allow special rights for homosexuals." The lesbian scene was posted on GameVideos earlier this week before Microsoft asked them to remove it.

[Thanks, Mitchell]

Although not exactly linked to his continuing video game related litigation, Jack Thompson submitting gay porn in court documents could certainly impact his ability to practice law in Florida and continue those cases. GamePolitics really has all the details on what's going on here, the backstory gets really complex. The main gist is Thompson believes the Florida Bar, in their continued effort to have him disbarred, is collaborating against him with a gay activist attorney from Miami who owns NationalGayNews (NGN). In a move to discredit this other lawyer, Thompson submitted to the court graphic content from adult entertainment advertisers the NGN links to in an attempt to show that this other lawyer was in the business of distributing "hardcore porn to anyone of any age." Judge Adalberto Jordan of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida was not amused -- at all.

Judge Jordan issued an order that Thompson show cause as to why he shouldn't face sanctions or contempt charges for the act. Obviously the judge didn't see the relevance of Thompson's evidence. See, the funny thing is because Thompson submitted these as court documents they are "made available for unlimited public viewing, on the court's docketing system." The images according to Judge Jordan include "several graphic images of oral and genital sex between adult males, [and were] filed electronically in the docket in this case, without prior permission from the court." Thompson now must justify his actions by Oct. 5 as to why he shouldn't be referred to the Florida court's review board. The bizarre thing about all of this -- beyond the porn if you can believe it -- is that Thompson upset the judge who'll decide the case of if the Florida Bar can stop him from practicing law.

The Brutes could actually be Halo 3's true "Spartans" as a recent preview article reveals they take comrades as lovers -- if the audio clip stays in the game. The information comes from a standard preview article where the writer goes into a bunch of audio facts and says, "One Bungie employee slyly asks the visiting reporters if anyone heard a Brute lament the death of an ally with the words: 'He was my lover.'" Apparently Brutes can actually answer the question if their comrade is a better lover than a fighter.

Now before the comment threads fill with: "Brutes R teh ghey? I'm not playing this game." Let's just take a moment to go over Halo lore. We checked with our own resident Halo aficionados and even a close Bungie source. Currently in the fiction there is no mention of any female characters in the whole Covenant, so we have no idea how the Covenant reproduce or if they even need females to reproduce. All we do know at this point is that even Brutes need love. Bungie still has bigger controversy to deal with as they still haven't decided if gamers can have a female Spartan warrior voice in multiplayer. We'll find out if Bungie leaves the Brute line in there on Sept. 25 -- hopefully they do.

[Thanks Dean]

In the summer of 2006, after receiving academic approval from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Jason Rockwood opened up the "Gaymer Survey" to the public. Rockwood expected 600 participants -- if he was lucky -- for the first-of-its-kind approved study exploring the social and behavioral demographic of gay video game players and the role of sexual orientation on gaming habits. The survey was discussed in some regional lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) publications and filtered out to the gaming press. The survey, with over 10,000 respondents, became a sexually inclusive survey of gamers -- gay, straight and bi.

The study originally broke new ground for not only being the first study exploring LGBT gamers, but it was the first academic study of any gamer group. There is currently no academic studies of female gamers or gamers of color. In a 2006 interview, Rockwood said, "The main purpose of the survey was to be a census. Before we can ask more intelligent questions we need to know who we are dealing with. First, we need to prove that homosexual gamers even exist. Yeah, it sounds ridiculous, but that's where you have to start on something like this. This survey is an attempt to quantify the existence of an invisible minority."

Continue after the break for some highlights from the survey

A piece on BlackVoiceNews explores blacks playing and portrayed in video games. The two part piece (1 and 2) by Ricard O. Jones expresses his views on the harm to blacks by racial stereotyping and obsession with gaming. Based on a 2006 Kaiser Family Foundation study that revealed black youth play video games 90 minutes a day, 30 minutes more than white youth, that "it stands to reason that blacks are the most negatively effected" by the game media's portrayal. Jones uses the "poor self-images" from Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas to illustrate his point. In all fairness though, the first two GTA's had a generic white guy and an Italian mobster stereotype as the anti-hero. The question being: Would it have been better not to have Carl Johnson at all? Take-Two took a bit of a risk using a black protagonist nestled in the Cali gangsta' culture of the early-'90s.

Portrayal of diverse characters in video games is a simple issue of marketing and numbers. Jones states this in the first piece's closer, "The video game industry is all about money. No one really cares about your skin color or gender if you are a well-trained video game designer or illustrator. The problem is that [black] youth and adult players see themselves as players and not designers or illustrators. Therefore unless they're motivated to get on the business end versus the player end of the video game phenomenon they will continue to be portrayed in a negative light and also miss out on a ten billion dollar a year industry."

The impact, influence and potential of minorities will certainly be part of the discussion at the Game Developers Conference's Diversity: The Window of Opportunity headed by Joseph Saulter. A similar session last year pointed to more blatantly offensive games like 25 to Life, which were crass compared to the more refined GTA: San Andreas.

See also: Jade is Latina, Asian, Black ... who knows?

[via GamePolitics]

Gamasutra published a round-up of the Bully situation and even goes on to ask in the headline, "Is gay content on the rise?" The article serves as a primer on instances of gay content appearing in video games, but never gets close to answering the "Is gay content on the rise?" question. It may have been a nice topic to explore, but what we actually end up getting from the piece are two interesting sections with Peter Molyneux and infamous SimCopter programmer Jacques Servin. Sex in Video Games author Brenda Brathwaite also makes an appearance as the voice of sexual reason and context.

Molyneux explains that the gay content in Fable wasn't about social consciousness or trying to be fair, but pretty much was born out of laziness, he says, "Our villagers each had a simple concept of 'attraction to the hero.' We'd have had to write extra code to remove that in the case of same-sex interactions. This seemed like a ridiculous waste of time."

Servin is remembered as the man who made male-on-male kissing sprites occur in SimCopter during the mid-'90s -- he was immediately fired when this was exposed. Servin says, "Will [Wright] is great, brilliant, fun to work with ... there was no homophobia, nor was there any problem with gay content." Of course, Will Wright would go on to create The Sims, a very gay-friendly game. Although it isn't mentioned in the Gamasutra piece, Servin in a previous interview stated he added the content to get back at his manager for being overworked.

Molyneux closes the piece saying that Fable 2 will allow players to mold their characters sexuality and even allow them to choose their gender this time around, "This isn't a moral stance ... We create games for everyone, and attempt to be as inclusive as possible." Translation: Whatever gets the widest amount of people to purchase the game works for him. Money talks ...

See also: Warm Tea: The Bully boy-on-boy kiss goes mainstream

Every other week, Bonnie Ruberg contributes Playing Dirty, a column on sex and gender in video games:

Puppies are gay. Dancing is for homos. Even Link is a little queer.

"Gay" has become a strange, strange word. From happy to homosexual to stupid, it can mean many different things. But there's no ambiguity in an insult like "That's so gay" – the favorite homophobic tag line of defenders of the heterosexual norm. It's like a built-in security system: whatever doesn't fit in gets "outed."

Of course, there's no group that fits the heterosexual norm – young, male, straight – better than gamers. At least, that's how we're perceived, and often how we act: as a boys' club. We like big guns, fast cars, hot women. Maybe that's why we're so quick to attack games that lack traditional testosterone. Between forums, blogs, and general grumblings, gamers have declared everything from Nintendogs to Dance Dance Revolution to The Wind Waker (Bright colors? Queer!) "gay."

Rockstar's Bully, however, doesn't fit that list. It's not pretty, or cute. If you don't watch out, it might even beat you up for your lunch money. Like the Grand Theft Auto series before it -- and especially the oh-so-controversial, hidden hetero action in San Andreas -- it's a man's game. Which, perhaps, is why we're so surprised to learn that Bully, too, is "gay."

Bully hero Jimmy Hopkins is bisexual, or just experimenting, based on videos starting to surface. Looks like the controversy about Bully was a bit premature, as Hopkins obviously prefers to make love, not war. This is not "Hot Coffee" by any stretch of the imagination -- just kids kissing.

Now before everybody goes crazy, depending on your moral sensibilities, there are two videos after the break. Gamebrink's version is quick like a band-aid, with one smooch session. Of course, GayGamer's version has Jimmy going back for seconds -- nope, thirds -- wait, fourths.

The game is rated T and the box clearly states that there are "sexual themes." Players can also go through Bully without ever having to kiss a boy if they don't want to. Hopefully, the negative hype about Bully is so played out that this surprising content won't cause a frenzy about youth corruption or some such nonsense. Once again, it's kissing -- everyone stay calm.

UK gay magazine Attitude in their latest issue has the first video game advertisement specifically targeted at the gay market. The advertisement is for Sony's karaoke title Singstar: Anthems, which when originally reviewed had people noticing that there was a bit of a stereotypical queer quality to the track list. Looks like Sony went ahead and is trying to capitalize on that.

Although many complain about the fact that different gamer demographics are popping up (casual, female, gay), it's fascinating to see a major company like Sony actually take note of a specific demographic and target it. Singstar is not widely available or known in the U.S., otherwise it would have been interesting to see if this ad appeared in gay publications Advocate and Out. Gay brand loyalty is well documented at this point, so even if readers of Attitude aren't interested in Singstar, they recognize that a company actually targeted them as a consumer.

This is an indicator that video game marketing isn't just for the hardcore gamer magazines anymore. Companies are looking to diversify their audience as the cost of the product and general acceptance of gaming increases. Although game ads have shown up randomly in some major magazines, this niche marketing certainly puts a new spin on things. Attitude is still a mens publication, gay or straight, men still make up a majority of gamers. When game ads start showing up in Cosmopolitan, then you know something big is going on.

Ever wonder how sexual orientation might affect one's gaming preferences? A recent graduate of the University of Illinois, under the guidance of professor Dmitri Williams, is conducting a survey to find out to what extent (if at all) one's sexual preference can determine or affect what one plays.

People of all sexual preferences are being asked to take this survey. All participants are anonymous and survey is estimated to take 25-45 minutes to complete (we finished in around 30 minutes). Game Politics has a brief interview with Jason Rockwood, the graduate conducting this survey, on why he thinks it is an important study (we are pretty interested, too, since a few Joystiq readers vowed to not buy Twilight Princess after Link was voted hottest male character by Out magazine). The chat with Rockwood also gives us our vocabulary word for the day: heteronormativity. Try using that phrase in conversation today.

You can take the survey by clicking on the link below or by clicking on the adjacent image.

While Joystiq does not support using "gay" in a derogatory sense, this shirt is indicative of the uphill battle Nintendo is facing in convincing its audience that Wii is the best name.