Stereotypes + Homosexuality = Comedy?

I personally don't watch much TV, especially considering that I don't actually own a TV. So this is all from a slightly off focus point of view. Which in my opinion, might be most fair. This is because I don't have a particular bias for one show or the other. I'm not as susceptible to the continuous trending of TV sitcom stereotypes but very well know that it's there. And I'm certainly not immune to accepting what the networks provide. So every time I do see a new TV sitcom is always a little interesting.
I find that homosexuality has a strange place in TV sitcoms right now. With shows like Modern Family,  Glee, The New Normal and others, homosexuality is placed in the forefront - at the very tip of the shows to create comedy. The comedy genre is an interesting place to discuss a cultural and socially unstable topic.
It offers what you may call a "padding" that allows difficult or hot-button-topics to be more approachable. And specifically with homosexuality, aside from what the shows are themselves promoting or suggesting through their written characters etc, the topic may benefit from this approach. In class we covered Ellen Degeneres and her change in TV and her strengths for being public and funny. Writers and stories can develop a short hand with the audience that is difficult to communicate in a straight forward argument. This is the essential power of story. However because it's comedy, it has the potential to become cheap. The writing and jokes are within reach to become shallow and easy. A complexity and well developed structure must insist on helping and promoting such topics as homosexuality. Instead, if they lean to the easy route of cheap and gaf jokes, it will essentially derail the point of featuring such characters.
Creating characters as a comedic spring board is one thing - creating a character as a clown with intentions to be laughed at is entirely different. Though some shows may originally use characters to focus on social topics, and respectfully write for homosexual characters to be complex and well crafted, it's inevitable for this character to become a stereotype. This now flat, unsurprising character is easy to use and fits into the role that has been establish in the same vain as others stereotypes - the husband, the mother of three, the arrogant boss, etc.
Comedy is best when it tiptoes the dramatic realities of life and the ironies of the very world it lives in. But this mentality rarely sells and excels in popular television. Homosexuality then finds equality on the keyboards of writers working for TV sitcoms. It seems to me to have just become another pawn such as the stereotypes mentioned before - the bafoon husband, the stressed out mother, struggling immigrant, etc. And at this point the argument transitions past homosexuality in comedy and a much more broad problem of media and stereotypes.