Same gender relationships are now allowed in Star Wars: The Old Republic, but they are confined to a single planet in the galaxy.
SGR was introduced to the Star Wars MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game) as part of Rise of the Hutt Cartel pack which added a single planet called "Makeb." As of now, this planet is the only place in the galaxy where characters are allowed to select flirtatious dialogue options when talking to characters of the same gender.
Unsurprisingly, Makeb is now referred to as "the gay planet."
Unfortunately for gay players, it is almost impossible to allow SGR across the whole SWTOR universe since it requires rewriting and recording hundreds (if not thousands) of hours of voice acted dialogues. As a reasonable compromise, it seems that BioWare has decided to make SGR available in content produced hence forth.
"First of all, I want to apologize that this is taking so long to get in the game," wrote BioWare executive producer Jeff Hickman on the game’s official site. "I realise that we promised SGR (same gender relationships) to you guys and that many of you believed that this would be with a companion character. Unfortunately, this will take a lot more work than we realised at the time and it (like some other pieces of content we talked about earlier in the year) has been delayed as we focused on the changes required to take the game Free-to-Play. "
"As we have said in the past, allowing same gender romance is something we are very supportive of," he affirmed.
Interestingly, this decision was criticized by conservatives and liberals alike. As for conservatives, they argued that "Star Wars is a family-based story with nothing to do with SGR" while liberals viewed the exclusion of gay characters to a single area that is accessible only by paying extra money as an "oddly regressive move."