gender in fantasy

The next question. Why does fantasy and it's speculative cousin horror allow for nearly as much in the way of gender bending as the "gay lit" section, which it just annoys me that we still have to have separated? I've covered some of this before, but this time I'm asking the question, not giving the answer. I will give you slight answers. I'll give you my reason. Why the hell wouldn't I have gay people in my books? I haven't gone for transgender yet, because it hasn't come up in a character, but I grew up in a world of just about every sexual orientation and gender assignation. So not putting them in my books would be weird. But that's just me. I'm more curious about why Mercedes Lackey has made a career off messing with her characters sexual orientations? Why does Tanya Huff do it as habit? Horror I'm less familiar with, but has unapologetic gay relationships? These days it is easier for a writer to write about a gay relationship and have it be filed as lit. instead of gay lit., but fantasy has been doing it for years. Sheri S. Tepper is a famous founding mother of so much fantasy and so unapologetic about who her characters loved. Is it all right for us because we aren't real? Did we get to say it way back in the sixties and seventies because we said it was in a galaxy far far away? Part of the reason I ask, is that it gave us great power in earlier years. We tread where the treading was tough in most genres. We still do it without getting stuck in gay lit. If we have the power to be here, queer, and proud of it now, what other ways could we use our power of not being real?