Meet the first official LGBT character in Star Wars canon

After decades' worth of content, Star Wars is getting its first official LGBT character. It took a while, but Paul S. Kemp will introduce a character named Moff Mors in his upcoming Star Wars novel "Lords of the Sith."

According to Big Shiny Robot, Moff Mors is an Imperial who has made "some very serious mistakes," but is still considered to be "an incredibly capable leader and spends much of the book working hard to prevent absolute failure." The site also casually mentions that Mors "happens to be a lesbian."

Cool. Honestly, it's not a big deal for me; I'm excited a group of people are going to be represented in the Star Wars universe, but I also expect all sorts of overreaction to this news. And sadly, because this is the internet, I suspect most of it will be negative. Not that I think most people would be against such a move, but it's usually the bigoted ones that are loudest on the internet.

Although this is the first LGBT character to be officially recognized in Star Wars cannon, same-sex relationships have been referenced in some games and books. BioWare added the option for a same-sex relationship in Star Wars: The Old Republic. Still, though, it's nice to see this sort of diversity officially added to the Star Wars universe because, really, it's kind of weird that it wasn't before.

Speaking on the Full of Sith podcast, "Lords of the Sith" editor Shelly Shapiro talked a bit more about the groundbreaking character Moff Mors. "This is certainly the first [LGBT] character in canon," Shapiro said. "But there was a gay Mandalorian couple, so it's not brand new. It's not something I really think about, it just makes sense. There's a lot of diversity–there should be diversity in "Star Wars." You have all these different species and it would be silly to not also recognize that there's a lot of diversity in humans. If there's any message at all, it's simply that "Star Wars" is as diverse (or more so because they have alien species) as humanity is in real life and we don't want to pretend it's not. It just felt perfectly natural."

Shapiro makes a good point. Even if the sexual orientation of a character may not align with your beliefs, it's unrealistic to not acknowledge the LGBT community, especially in a universe as large as Star Wars.

[IGN]