Readers' Choice: The Top 25 Gay TV Characters Revealed!

Rickie was television’s first gay teenage character to have a regular role in a series, and what a series it was: The groundbreaking, massively influential one-season wonder known as “My So-Called Life,” the story of a group of friends in a Pittsburgh high school that ran for only one year in the mid-90s before becoming a cult hit.

Played by out gay actor Wilson Cruz, Rickie struggled with first, unrequited love, the demands and rewards of friendship, girls having crushes on him, an abusive family, homelessness, and trying to find a place for himself in the world. Rickie Vasquez was made of equal parts vulnerability and courage, and embodied the painful outsider inside every queer kid who ever went to high school.

Desperate Housewives’ Andrew Van de Kamp (Shawn Pyfrom) is a very popular boy, making it all the way to number 15 on our countdown. This comes as a bit of a surprise because Andrew, while being very secure in his sexuality (a rarity for a gay TV teen), is also something of a sociopath.

Andrew has always been a troubled teen. In the first season, he ran over Carlos’ mother putting her in a coma. In the second season, after the death of his father, he grew increasingly at odds with mother Bree. She had trouble accepting her son’s sexual orientation, leading Andrew to conclude that she didn’t really love him. This led him to retaliate with an all out campaign to destroy Bree's life. Andrew’s cold-blooded machinations were impressive; he went so far as to seduce his mother’s boyfriend. When Bree found the two of them in bed, she was so devastated that she drove her son out of town abandoning him on the side of the road.

After time living on the street, Andrew returned home in Season 3 and gradually repaired his relationship with his mother. His storyline was pretty quiet during the third season but fans of the character can take heart. Executive producer Marc Cherry has promised to feature Andrew more prominently in the future. "He’s had such a tame year [in Season 3], it's time to kind of juice him up again."