Hugh Jackman, nominated for an Oscar this year for Les Miserables, has always shrugged off the persistent rumors that he must be gay.

But for his wife of 17 years, Deborra-Lee Furness, the gay talk is becoming more bothersome as the years go on.

'Just recently, it bugs her,' Jackman admits in the new issue of The Hollywood Reporter. 'She goes: 'It's big. It's everywhere!' '

A homoerotically-charged scene in the new film Skyfall features a villain named Silva (Javier Bardem) caressing the chest of James Bond (Daniel Craig) as 007 is tied up.

Bond responds to the move by saying: 'What makes you think this is my first time?'

This has led to speculation that Bond is bisexual.

But screenwriter John Logan tells The Hollywood Reporter that's not necessarily the case.

On ABC's Modern Family, Ty Burr's character of Phil Dunphy has a brother-in-law who is gay and is raising a young daughter with a male partner.

Those characters, Mitchell (Jesse Tyler Ferguson) and Cameron (Eric Stonestreet) are among the show's most popular and Burr says that he believes they have helped the gay rights movement in some ways.

When looking at the career of Ellen DeGeneres as a whole, it would appear she's had a charmed existance.

Her sitcom, Ellen, ran for four seasons on ABC and she won an Emmy for writing the famous episode in 1997 in which her character came out - at around the same time DeGeneres came out publicly.

Then since 2003, she has won many more Emmys for daytime's The Ellen DeGeneres Show which beings its 10th season next month.

Oprah Winfrey may be an Oscar-nominated actress, the talk show queen has taken on very few roles since she made a splash in 1985's The Color Purple.

One of the acting roles she did take on was as a therapist in a 1997 landmark episode of Ellen in which the lead character played by Ellen DeGeneres comes out as a lesbian.

Winfrey now reveals that after she appeared in the episode, which won an Emmy for its writing, the backlash quickly began.

Approximately a month ago, President Barack Obama was the mortal enemy to gay and lesbian America.

According to a number of gay bloggers, writers, and activists, the president differed little from infamous civil rights foes like Bull Connor. In 1963, the Commissioner of Public Safety for the city of Birmingham, Alabama, ordered the use of fire hoses and police dogs on peaceful protestors. No one accused Obama of putting state trained dogs on children, but 30 days ago he was as hostile to gay equality as Connor was to black voting rights.