STAR COUPLES Clockwise from top right, Jasika Nicole, at right in photo, and Claire Savage; Mark Cornelson, left, and T. R. Knight; George Takei, right, and Brad Altman; Neil Patrick Harris, right, and David Burtka; Portia de Rossi and Ellen DeGeneres.  Photo graphic and story, below, from the New York Times

There's a bisexual woman in Bones and a lesbian couple on The Goode Family.

Dirty Sexy Money features a transsexual and Brothers & Sisters a gay marriage.

In Mad Men, the Emmy-winning drama set in the early ‘60s, there’s Salvatore Romano, a self-loathing homosexual who marries a woman but pines for a male co-worker.

Never before have gay story lines been so prominent. Nor have there ever been so many gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender characters on television — 83 by a recent count from the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, not counting reality shows, daytime dramas or gay-oriented cable networks.

Hollywood, with its depictions of cowboy lovers and lesbian neighbors, has done much to make gay men and women part of mainstream American life.

At the same time, gay actors like Neil Patrick Harris and T. R. Knight play heterosexual characters on TV and in film, while couples — Ellen DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi — are covered by celebrity magazines as if they were any old romance.

“We’ve gone from the revolution to the evolution,” said Howard Bragman, a longtime Hollywood publicist who is gay and has advised actors like Amanda Bearse, of Married ... With Children and Dick Sargent of Bewitched on how to handle their coming out.

Yet for most gay actors, Hollywood is not a warm and fuzzy episode of Will & Grace. Today, it is certainly more acceptable to be openly gay. But these actors must still answer wrenching questions: Just how candid do you want to be? Would you be happy appearing only in comedies, or being pigeonholed as a character actor? And what does the line “You’re just not right for the role” really mean?

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