Would LGBTQA Characters Ruin Star Wars?

I took a poll on Twitter the other day asking if people would like to see LGBTQA characters appear in Star Wars. I did this expecting maybe a few hundred people to respond. I have a decent-sized Twitter following, but nothing excessive.

In 24 hours, 3,600 people voted. And the results — unanimously — stated that people either really wanted LGBTQA characters to appear in Star Wars or did not feel strongly about it and wouldn’t care either way.

But through it all, the poll also attracted a good deal of homophobic responses as well as some perhaps well-meaning responses counter to my central desire to see Han and Chewie fly through space in a rainbow Millennium Falcon.

There are two approaches I could take to these comments: ignore them or respond to them. In debating to do this, I came across a reoccurring response from the side that didn’t want queer characters in their Star Wars: LGBTQA characters in Star Wars would “ruin” it.

All or Nothing

The responses functioned under the belief that, if LGBTQA characters were to appear in a Star Wars film, the story would become about queerness, therefore…