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

Chris Keller is one of only two bisexual characters to make our list, and the other one — Torchwood's Captain Jack — is technically omnisexual. He's also the only convicted murderer to make the list, having wound up in HBO's fictional Oswald Penitentiary for committing several murders.

It is there that the bisexual Keller meets the ostensibly straight Tobias Beecher (Lee Tergesen) in the series' second season. Their courtship is hardly the typical one with Keller wooing Beecher solely in order to curry favor with another inmate who is seeking revenge against Beecher.

Despite setting Beecher up for a brutal beating that leaves his arms and legs broken, the two men do eventually fall in love though it doesn't last long. Over the ensuing seasons their relationship goes through ups and downs worthy of a Shakespearean tragedy including murder, betrayal, and suicide.

Keller's inclusion here is significant as it indicates there have been enough gay characters that one as complex and villainous as Keller can still be a fan favorite.

Jack McPhee arrived at fictional Capeside High School during the second season of out gay writer Kevin Williamson's Dawson's Creek. Jack was eventually forced out of the closet by a sadistic English teacher who made him read a personal and revealing poem in front of his class. The gut-wrenching scene, one of Dawson Creek's most memorable, appears below.

To his surprise, Jack's classmates rallied around him, forcing the sadistic teacher into early retirement.

Despite support from his friends, particularly Pacey (Joshua Jackson), Jack would continue to struggle with his sexuality for the remainder of the series. Thankfully he did have some memorable relationships along the way, and, in fact, the character can boast having shared the first onscreen gay male kiss on network television. And in the Season 3 finale, Jack finally screwed up the courage to lock lips with his longtime crush, Ethan (Adam Kauffman).

The bitchy gay queen is no breakthrough in terms of gay male stereotypes in entertainment. Fashion-obsessed, shallow, prissy men who serve little purpose other than to drop of-the-minute pop culture references and lob zingy barbs at our heroes have been around for decades.

But leave it to ever-impressive Ugly Betty to take this stereotype to a new level. Marc St. James, viperish assistant to Wilhelmina Slater, is a bitchy gay queen with a barely-beating heart strapped under all that Burberry plaid. Initially a throw-away minion, thanks to stellar writing and Michael Urie's portrayal, Marc has been given a human side that these characters seldom enjoy, and his ill-fated coming out to his overbearing mother (played by Patti LuPone, in a deft twist) made us actually feel for the guy, as much as we may have resisted.

This season Marc fell in love with Cliff, a decidedly non-fabulous (actually, downright shlubby) photographer, putting another crack in his armor. So yes, we love Marc because he's a living, breathing, feeling person fighting to get out from under all that nasty ... and in the meantime, the nasty's pretty darn fun.