[quote=@Little Bird]
Not sure about the "pandering" aspect. This is RPing. Not Hollywood. Openly allowing people to play a character of a specific orientatiom doesn't equate to "Hey we have a gay character" the way it migbt in a pre-scripted movie or show. Even if it was that way, by your outlook, wpuld it not be just as much of a pander to play a character as bi/gay or build up to a come out without explicitly mentioning it OOC?
[/quote]
I should clarify on that aspect, because you're right that in these RP scenarios it's not the same as advertising. I guess maybe a better way to say it would be that, in the same way the corpo-advertisement lacks depth, I've seen some examples where Players seem to overemphasize the parts about sexuality to the detriment of the parts about personality. I just see it as an inherently bad sign if the question "So what kind of character are you playing?" is answered with "I'm playing a gay/bi/super straight girl/boy/etc," instead of "I'm playing a nepo-baby college drop-out with a coke habit who is trying to avoid the mob," or "I'm playing a fallen noble scion who's entered a pact with a fae to save the village his family used to govern."

[quote]In my personal experience, the RPs wherein sexuality has a spot on the CS, things like relationships are planned and plotted (mostly) ahead of time anyways. So the "will they, won't they" isn't a factor OOC... usually. So being open about which way one's character(s) swing(s) becomes useful in ironing those matters out.[/quote]
That does sound out like it would work better, but from my perspective also seems like it would take out the fun of character-self-discovery. My experience has been that RPs where a lot of stuff is planned out between characters ahead of time often suffer from a lack of motivation in players, because... well, they already know where the story's going to go, so why bother playing it out? Of course that won't be the same for every writer, so I'm sure it wouldn't be the same for every RP either. 

[quote]I agree to the extent that a characters' personality should be able to stand without leaning on sexual orientation. But I don't think it inherently detracts from an RP if the option to specify it is present in the CS. I'm sure as Hell not gonna abandon an RP that I find appealing over such a minute detail of the process. But that's why it's your pet peeve and not mine.[/quote]
Right. That first part is mostly what I'm trying to emphasize, my objections just come from my own experiences where that [i]hasn't[/i] been the case. Or cases where it was on the sheet even though the RP didn't emphasize the pursuit of romance, but because it was there it attracted a Player(s) who maybe was more concerned with trying to bump uglies than, say, helping us abscond with ye olde ghost pirate's treasure horde before we're caught by cannibal natives.

I should also mention that I embellish examples for the sake of humor, I'm not really trying to factually debate anybody about the subject of Sexuality on character sheets.