With the recent media frenzy around the possible coming out of Ellen DeGeneres’s television character, Ellen Morgan, people have found their gaydar turning to other sitcom characters. Even before DeGeneres’s series, Ellen, premiered in 1994 (then titled These Friends of Mine), television viewers had a prime suspect.

From its premiere episode, NBC’s Friends showed definite signs of gay life in one of its main characters, the sharp-tongued Chandler Bing, played by Matthew Perry.

Whispers about the character have been buzzing around Hollywood since early last spring. Most recently the torque on the rumor mill was turned up a notch with Entertainment Weekly’s October 4 cover story, “Out?” in which an accompanying article suggests that it’s time Chandler and roommate Joey, played by Matt LeBlanc, declare their true sexuality.

In tracing Chandler’s gay roots, TV viewers may be surprised that from the first episode of Friends, he exhibited several signs that left other characters on the show, and viewers alike, questioning his sexuality. In the series premiere, Chandler filled the gang in on a dream he had, saying, “OK, kids. I’m in Las Vegas. I’m Liza Minnelli.”

But David Crane, the show’s out cocreator and one of its executive producers, denies that Chandler is gay. “He’s straight,” says Crane. “He’s not gay and in denial. His father may be gay, but he’s not.”

Of course, few loyal Friends fans will forget another first-season episode in which Chandler’s coworkers assumed he was gay upon first meeting him. “What is it? I just have to know. Is it my hair?” Chandler asked. Though he’s lovingly reassured that it’s just a certain quality,” it’s one he seems to have been unable to shake throughout all three seasons of the show.

Then there’s the question of the relationship between Chandler and his testosterone-driven roommate, Joey Tribbiani. “I think that Chandler wants to have Joey’s child not that there’s anything wrong with that,” says Gail Shister, TV columnist for The Philadelphia Inquirer and an out lesbian herself. “It wouldn’t surprise me at all if Chandler comes out.”

Crane disagrees, claiming that a sexual energy between the two characters was never intended. As he puts it, “There’s a lot of feeling there. Is it sexual? No. It’s emotional. These two guys are emotionally crazy about each other, but sexually, not at all. Very often we played Chandler’s relationship with Joey like an old married couple. So it doesn’t surprise me that people would think he’s gay, but in our minds, he isn’t.”

But as to whether Crane had ever planned on developing Chandler as a gay man, his reply is a bit more tenuous. “We didn’t go into this determined that Chandler would be straight,” he says. “If we had cast a different actor who was gay there was the option that we would have taken the character in that direction.”

Now that the final word seems to have come down on the side of Chandler’s heterosexuality, is there anything wrong with his dating girls and not guys? Has a gay fantasy driven by a desire for more representation on prime-time TV run amok?

“It’s a holdover from the self-hatred period,” says Emmy award winning TV writer Bruce Vilanch. “We have this need to make someone who is attractive gay because then it makes it OK for us to be gay.”

Former KNBC-TV Los Angeles entertainment reporter Garrett Glaser agrees with Vilanch. “It’s wishful thinking,” Glaser says. “I can’t tell you how many people have said to me, “Tom Cruise is gay,” or “Richard Gere is gay.” These guys are really open about gay stuff, they have lots of gay friends, and because they’re good-looking and sympathetic, they get labeled as gay. It kind of bothers me. Why shouldn’t we give these straight guys a little space?”

OK, Chandler, take all the space you need. But remember, it takes a real man to walk a mile in Liza’s shoes.