The Uproar we Missed >> Gay Marriage in ToEE

Well, I hate to say it, but sometimes it happens. You follow a game closely enough but it seems there are some things you just miss. <a href="http://slate.msn.com//id/2098406/">Like this article on gay marriage</a> in the Temple of Elemental Evil, for example. Which was apparently itself inspired <a href="http://www.armchairarcade.com/aamain/content.php?article.27">by this article</a>:
<br><blockquote>In Troika Game’s computer role playing game The Temple of Elemental Evil (2003), the player is presented with a role-playing scenario that may shock even seasoned veterans of the genre: The player is asked to rescue, and given the option to marry, an openly gay character (Bertram).
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<br>The party can elect to take Bertram with them or, more likely, allow him to remain in Nulb where he will pleasantly pass the hours until the player finishes the game. He shows back up in the concluding scenes if the player rescued him. A portrait is displayed with two men embraced, and the narrator levelly explains that you and Bertram were married and lived, as they say, happily ever after.
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<br>Gay avatars are an inevitable development in the evolution of the videogame that will take place with or without this article. If we already see such possibilities opening up in even mainstream titles like The Temple of Elemental Evil, I doubt it will be long before even the idea of a fantasy role-playing game featuring only one white male avatar will seem a strange, misguided aspect of our distant past. Is this a good thing? Should we fight this trend or encourage it? I’d love to offer some general guidelines or at least some advice for game developers on this issue, but, as is perhaps more common in philosophy than we like, the issue only gets more confusing the more we try to analyze it. Perhaps the best approach would be to start talking to self-proclaimed gay persons and determine what they would like to experience in a videogame. To my knowledge, The Temple of Elemental Evil is the only mainstream computer role playing game that gives players a serious gay option without “forcing� gayness on a heterosexual player. Perhaps it will serve as a worthy model for games to come.</blockquote>
<br>Poor Bertram, always getting the blame for people rescuing him. The article's quite long and apparently, it caused a bit of a stir in various circles.
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<br>Discuss!