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I don’t mind evil characters who happen to be gay. I mean, we’re always saying we’re “everywhere,” so it stands to reason that some of us are out there blowing up buildings and playing taxidermy with our dead mothers. And I’m a dramatist myself; I know that art doesn’t exist to further a political agenda.

But when the only gay characters in big budget studio films are evil, and when those characters also display the stereotype that gay men are weak and cowardly, well, that’s when I mind.

Remember that this is an industry that has never shied away from showing male-on-male rape, but that has still filmed exactly one gay male love scene in a major studio movie: Making Love, way back in 1982.

Filmmakers always say that by portraying one gay character as evil, they’re not making a homophobic statement about all gay people. Maybe so. But let’s be honest: what they indisputably are doing is using the audience’s discomfort with homosexuality and/or effeminacy to make the villain more creepy, and to make more of a contrast with the traditionally masculine hero.

Oftentimes the gay villain will even make some sort of ham-fisted pass at the hero, which is, of course, treated with complete disgust on his part, and by the appalled, outraged audience.

Willy Wonka in this summer’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory isn’t a villain per se, but Johnny Deep certainly used effeminacy, and our collective impressions of would-be child molester Michael Jackson, to make the audience uneasy about the character.

Anyway, all this makes it just that much more satisfying to the audience when Our Hero kills or otherwise humiliates the gay villain. Traditional gender roles are affirmed, and everything is right in the world.

And some effeminate gay men wonder why they can’t get a date!

The existence of all these gay movie villains and the heroic macho men who vanquish them is particularly ironic when you think about the places where you actually find sky-high rates of domestic abuse and other criminal activity. A convention of interior decorators? The United Association of Florists?

Um, no, actually it’s the military and the world of professional sports.

But that’s what you get when you let straight men decide what movies get made, which is the situation we have today.

It’s infuriating, it’s depressing, but it’s another part of the Big Gay Picture.

Brent Hartinger is the author of the gay teen novel, Geography Club, which is currently being adapted for the movies. The sequel, The Order of the Poison Oak, is in stores now. Explore “Brent’s Brain,” his website, at brenthartinger.com.

Read previous installments of The Big Gay Picture here.

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