I spent a lot of tonight playing Mass Effect 2 (sweet jebus what a game), but when I came up for air it was to watch some interesting YouTube videos from the series. These videos were early development footage, PC hacks/mods, or perhaps a little of both. They showed Commander Shepard romancing members of the same sex (a male Shepard romancing Kaidan, a female Shepard romancing Miranda or Ashley or Jack….yeah, I watched more of those, so sue me :p ).

The comments to these videos, at least those on the first page, were universally positive (well, to a degree…I'll get to that a little later). Many people asking rhetorically why these options were cut at all. I think that's a very good question. What's gained by their removal?

The pedantically obvious answer is a lack of controversy. If Bioware want to avoid being attacked Religious Right Wing Group X for "corrupting our children" by showing them two CGI women or two CGI men getting it on, and if they think it's staunchly in their best interests, then of course that's what they're going to do.

But is it really so big a deal anymore? Particularly with video games. Particularly with this  video game. It's already violent, with sexual content, and adult language. It's not like two girls kissing is going to be the one big bad ugly thing that means Walmart won't sell this game.

And, as we now, two girls kissing does not get the same reaction that two boys kissing does. The comments on YouTube were positive in the sense that they weren't negative, or at the very least they weren't attacks. The lesbian Shepard videos had a number of comments which consisted of little or nothing more than "FAP FAP FAP." We must never forget about the horny 12 year old boys in the room… Frankly I was a little surprised there weren't negative comments for the gay (male) Shepard videos. There were several comments wistful that it could have been option to them on playthroughs.

The simple question then becomes what's more important – keeping Religious Right Wing Group X at bay, or satisfying a population with a spending power that's largely untapped – us. Okay, maybe not us, since we'd buy the game anyway, and maybe this is kind of a poor example with which to make my larger point, but the term in my subject line is commonly used to describe the buying power of the queer community – 'the pink dollar.'

Why have mainstream retailers and media producers gone out of their way to not produce mainstream content that could draw in queer-identified buyers in droves? Or is the question one of definitions – does anything friendly to queer audiences automatically not equal mainstream (I think that's kinda bullshit, but it's a counter-argument I hear at times). More importantly, why do they continually not do so, as society has gotten ever so gradually more and more comfortable with the fact that there are boys in this world who like other boys. And girls who like other girls. That was at the core of most of the YouTube comments – 'is this really such a big deal anymore?'

I have no answers, only hopes.