They will claim that you're trying to shove queer works in their face. Or the brighter and more accepting ones will accuse you of reading the work through the lens of the author's sexuality. Also, gay and lesbian students will project their experience on to a text without regard to what the author is actually saying. If students are first engaged in understanding the text, then they are more willing to engage in understanding how sexuality influences the way we read a work and how sexuality affects the way the work is constructed. I want the students to feel that I see them as adults and, as adults, we can discuss these matters openly, freely, and thoughtfully in the effort to understand.
Students look for signs of a teacher's bias one way or the other.
I like to show them that what I expect of them is no more than a mature, frank, and relevant discussion of the topic. Once, while I taught Audre Lorde's Walking Out Boundaries, a student made the comment that her love for another woman was unnatural. And the issue of naturalness comes up all the time, even among better-educated audiences. I've found several ways to deal with this issue. The first is to ask what the student means by natural.