The Top 50 Gay TV Characters. Vote Now!

Can we be serious here for a minute?

I mean it! You there in the back row – settle down or I’m sending you to the AfterElton.com editor’s office!

We do a lot of “fun” polls here at AfterElton.com – most notably, the AfterElton.com Hot 100 every summer. But we like to think that our poll of the Top 50 Gay and Bisexual Male TV Characters is a little more serious – and maybe more important.

Television matters. Who and what we see on our screens each week tells us a great deal about who we are and what is relevant in society, who has power, and who doesn’t. That’s why this website pays such close attention to the shows that have gay and bisexual characters and gay storylines. Each new character and every plot twist says something about the acceptance of gay and bisexual men in today’s world.

But it's been 2 1/2 years since we've asked our readers which gay and bisexual male characters are television's all-time "best". In the interim there has been an explosion of gay TV characters, so we've decided to ask you again.

As usual, we leave it to you to decide exactly what criteria you use to determine the "best." All we ask is that you limit your choices to male characters (as always, we leave the ladies for the folks over at our sister site, AfterEllen.com who are conducting their own poll here).

In our previous poll, more recent characterizations dominated the list, which makes sense to us since not only are these characters fresher in viewers’ minds, they’re almost always richer and more fully-developed than those earlier characters, who tended to be more stereotypical and/or slighted by their shows.

Still, we’d encourage you to give this some serious thought, and not merely vote for your current favorite show or the character played by "hottest" actor. What characters have moved you in a significant way? What characters do you think changed the way viewers view gay people – or impacted subsequent TV portrayals of gay and bisexual men? Or maybe it's simply a question of what characters struck you as the most "real" and the most expertly written and performed?

Either way, lodge your vote now! Note: the poll might be limited to male characters, but the voting is open to everyone, male or female, gay or straight.

You can enter up to ten names via the form below (first and last if you know them, otherwise the first name and the show they were on), but keep in mind a couple of rules. First, no ballot stuffing. Ballots with the same character name listed more than once will be discarded. Also, one vote per ISP address - only your last form submission will count. Foreign characters are fine whether they are English speaking or not, but please no reality competitors or other real people. Voting will be open until midnight March 5th. We'll tally the votes and announce the top 50 on March 15th.

On your mark! Get set! Vote! Oh, and once you do, why not encourage your Facebook friends and Twitter followers to weigh in too?

Voting has closed. Check back March 15th for the results.