The media, and especially advertising, plays a huge role in influencing how we perceive gender and sexual orientation. Advertising often portrays LGBT people as objects of ridicule or gratuitously pokes fun at us or presents us as scary people.
Advertising standards are changing but as you will see from this page, there is still a long way to go with advertising still being produced using unacceptable gay or trans humour or even overtly promoting homophobia, transphobia and male fantasy lesbian images.
The Commercial Closet Association web site is an excellent resource hosting over 4000 examples of LGBT representation in the media. This short video introduces you to the issues that they are attempting to deal with.