[RPG] How common is homosexuality in the Forgotten Realms

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For whatever roleplaying reason, I've decided that my Male Human Wizard is gay. After an exhausting week of dungeon crawling, he's heading down to the nearest medium to large-sized city for some R&R with a pocket full of hard-earned gp and would love to try to pick up a date.

How common is homosexuality in the default 5e setting? Yes, I know the practical, in-game answer is to ask my DM, but maybe he doesn't have much information either. Is this covered anywhere? Can a typical resident, or even adventurer, just expect to ask around for directions to nearby gay bars or hangouts and have a decent chance of getting help, or is this something that would be significantly difficult and/or dangerous to try? For comparison, in our world, this would probably not be an issue at all at a bookstore in Boston. Riyadh, not so much.

  • Is homosexuality common and practiced openly?
  • Is it common, but hidden, such that successfully making the appropriate contacts, knowing the right signs or lingo or whatever might require a lore check or an underworld contact?
  • Is homosexuality rare or vanishingly rare, such that most people would be shocked to even consider such a thing?
  • Are there specific backgrounds or places where this is more common? (e.g. followers of a certain god, members of specific races, etc.?)

If this is covered better in previous game editions, I'm open to them as long as they don't blatantly contradict 5e.

Best Answer

What the Player's Handbook says

In Chapter 4, "Personality and Background", the Subsection "Character Details" has a header titled "Sex" that makes the following remarks (emphasis mine):

Sex

You can play a male or female character without gaining any special benefits or hindrances. Think about how your character does or does not conform to the broader culture's expectations of sex, gender, and sexual behavior. For example, a male drow cleric defies the traditional gender divisions of drow society, which could be a reason for your character to leave society and come to the surface.

You don't need to be confined to binary notions of sex and gender. The elf god Corellon Larethian is often seen as androgynous or hermaphroditic, for example, and some elves in the multiverse are made in Corellon's image. You could also play a female character who presents herself as a man, a man who feels trapped in a female body, or a bearded female dwarf who hates being mistaken for a male. Likewise, your character's sexual orientation is for you to decide.

So it's fair to say that, at least by default, non-heteronormative gender expressions and sexualities are the normal in Forgotten Realms Lore, at least as established in 5th edition. Some races/cultures are canonically established as having looser, more progressive attitudes towards Gender and Sex, with Elves as a notable example, though Drow are also singled out as possibly having more repressive attitudes towards gender and sex. Other races and cultures are generally left unspecified in this regard—I'm not personally aware of any race or culture in 5e that explicitly is more conservative/oppressive in this specific regard, but I haven't exhausted every last detail of every worldbuilding guide provided by 5e sourcebooks.

Ultimately, this comes down to your DM, who gets to make these kinds of worldbuilding decisions, especially with respect to the degree to which your setting is accepting or tolerant of non-heteronormative representations. The degree to which your DM can dictate your own character's preferences, attitudes, and/or identification is limited (and I would probably avoid a DM that tried to make demands on this aspect of character building) but it can inform upon your character's expression nonetheless.

With respect to your more specific questions:

Is homosexuality common and practiced openly? Is it common, but hidden, such that successfully making the appropriate contacts or whatever might require a lore check or an underworld contact? Is homosexuality rare or vanishingly rare, such that most people would be shocked to even consider such a thing?

This is up to your DM, but 5e establishes that the answer can be assumed, short of conflicting evidence provided by your campaign, to be yes, homosexuality is generally regarded as accepted, and no, you wouldn't have to go underground/off the radar to find support.

(Aside, I don't want to downplay the agency the DM has in making these kinds of worldbuilding decisions, but just as a matter of practical guidance: as a DM, if you're unsure whether to make Faerun a "Progressive" or "Conservative" society by default, you should prefer "Progressive". There's a lot of reasons for this, which I think might be off-topic to get into here, but the short version is that you don't always know everything about the players you're playing with, even if you've known them a long time, and creating a setting that replicates the discrimination/prejudices they may be facing in their own lives may end up being harmful to them. If you are going to make a society that's more hostile towards non-heteronormative sexualities/identities, you should ensure all your players are supportive of that decision, and you definitely should not go ahead with that decision if you get any pushback on that decision.)

Are there specific backgrounds or places where this is more common? (e.g. followers of a certain god, members of specific races, etc.?)

Like mentioned in the PHB, Elves are one such example. Some Elves, as established in Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes (page 45), are even established as being able to alter their physical sex at will (mechanically, once per day, when they wake up) by virtue of having been blessed by Corellon.

Your DM also has the freedom to make additional examples or stipulations to these practices.

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