Should Spider-Man Ever Be Gay?

So this is a topic that has been brought to my attention recently, and given that I am a massive Spider-Man fan, i might have a few things to say about this. Should Spider-Man be gay? Well there are three ways to look at this, from a narrative stand point, a personal stand point and a marketing stand point. Let's start with marketing and honestly, it would be the best time to do it. They're about to relaunch all of Marvel comics, giving everyone a fresh start and altering other characters, not to mention Marvel is big on expanding their roster and making more diverse characters, so having what is arguably their most popular character gay, it works, if they were going to do it then i could definitely see this being the right opportunity. From a narrative stand point, it still works. The main objective of giving Peter a love interest is to show the difficulties he faces in balancing the life of Peter the ordinary person and Spider-Man the superhero, whatever gender the partner is doesn't matter, either can fulfill this role. And should they put Peter back in high school then it wouldn't feel as forced, high school is for a lot of people a time to experiment, to learn who they are and discover what type of person they would be. A lot of gay people discover this about themselves during high school years so it won't feel as forced as when DC comics tried to make Green Lantern gay (Yeah that happened).

Then finally there is the personal choice, do I think Peter Parker should be gay? No. Now creating a gay superhero I have no problem with, altering Spider-Man to make him more diverse, i also have no problem with. My problem comes not from making Spider-Man gay, but Peter Parker gay. When Marvel created Miles Morales as a black Spider-Man, i had no problem with it, this wasn't them altering a pre-existing character, this was them creating an entirely new character, and I love Miles Morales, he's a fresh take on the Spider-Man story and it works without feeling cheap or pandering. If they want to make an entirely new Spider-Man who happens to be gay, i would have no problem with it. But this idea of altering your most popular character to be more diverse feels like pandering, instead of going through the effort to make a new character and make them popular, take the shortcut by changing someone that's already there. Then there's the fact that you're messing with the character traits of said character for the sake of a wider appeal, that's lazy and wrong.

With that being said, if Peter Parker does turn out to be gay in the relaunch, i'm not going to be upset, i'm not going to be writing angry rants online and i won't consider it a mass betrayal of the character, his sexuality isn't that important when it comes to defining Peter Parker i just don't think it's the right thing to do and feels more like it would be pandering to an audience that it would be to tell interesting stories with the character.

-Danny