George R.R. Martin Discusses The Lack Of Gay Sex In “Game Of Thrones”

HBO's wildly successful series Game of Thrones seems to have covered all the bases in regards to sexuality, but the one area where it continues to lag behind is in gay sex. There have been some homosexual relationships on the series, but never any hot and heavy man on man action. 

Series creator George R.R. Martin was at the Edinburgh International Book Festival this weekend, and The Guardian (link below) covered his answer to fan demand for more gay sex.

Martin, who has two more in the series to publish, said he would put it in if it lent itself to the plot. He said the books are narrated through his "viewpoint" characters, so he was more limited than the TV shows. "Frankly, it is the way I prefer to write fiction because that is the way all of us experience life. You're seeing me from your viewpoint, you're not seeing what someone over here is seeing.

Because none of the viewpoint characters are gay, there are no explicit gay sex scenes in the early books. "A television show doesn't have those limitations," he said. "Will that change? It might. I've had letters from fans who want me to present particularly an explicit male sex scene – most of the letters come from women."

But he added: "I'm not going to do it just for the sake of doing it. If the plot lends itself to that, if one of my viewpoint characters is in a situation, then I'm not going to shy away from it, but you can't just insert things because everyone wants to see them.

"It is not a democracy. If it was a democracy, then Joffrey [the sadistic boy king] would have died much earlier than he did."

So it sounds like we're going to have to rely on HBO to step up to the plate now. Thankfully we've got Gay of Thrones to tide us over until Martin comes to his senses, but it's just not the same. This is one of those times when I actually hope that fan demand is overwhelming enough to make a creator change his mind about his creation. 

Via The Guardian