Sexuality and gender in gaming: Are there any realistic portrayals, and are they important?

This is a subject which interests me greatly. I was wondering what your viewpoints were on both the portrayals of gender and sexuality in gaming, how important you think they are as part of a game, and what, if any, you think the good examples are. I don't want to completely decide the direction of the conversation, so I won't provide what I think just yet, but I do have a few games that I think are particularly good in this regard and will chime in with those later. Anyway, thoughts?

EDIT: Downvoters, care to explain why? In my mind this is exactly the sort of conversation appropriate for TrueGaming. If you disagree, I'd like to know why that's the case.