A few points:
Gays aren't a seperate subset of people. The average gay guy doesn't care about getting the girl rather than getting the guy; I mean, I don't receive any sort of sexual gratification from rescuing the princess - it's an objective. It makes very little difference.
That aside, the issue at hand, being the gay content, is moot. The big question should be : who cares?
I played GTA: SA even though the main character is black and I'm white; played Vice City even though the character's Italian and I'm Canadian, so on. I don't think the nationality or sexual preferences of a character would ever deter me from playing a video game (unless of course the game was specifically geared to that, in which case I'd either feel like a douche or gay - that is to say, if the main object of the game was to, I dunno, produce rap albums (actually, I still might play it), or to have gay sex (as an extreme), I'd probably stay away). That said, the main point of the game is to survive. You're thrown into a raw, gritty, and real world and just gotta try to come out on top. Jimmy Hopkins is trying to survive more than anything.
Now, as a bully simulator? Fuck right off. The vast majority of people do not play video games for training; from that, there are three or four 'groups' within gaming... the smallest of which would probably those who might use Bully for training. The rest are either too smart or too responsible to do so.
And, the stuff you do in Bully? It's hardcore, stereotype bully stuff. Stuff that happens extremely rarely (tossing in garbage cans, swirlies, etc); there is of course general fist fighting and so forth, but we see that in tons of other games, so that isn't the issue.
That said, anyone who opposes Bully as it's a gay/bully simulator is simply a douchebag.
Whenever Rockstar gets slammed for a game (like every game except for Table Tennis, which was slammed before it was even announced with a title), there seems to be two sides to the fence with a group in the middle - those who oppose it, those who don't care, and of course, those who end up playing it (but likely don't care about the bad press). I'm sure that for every one or two members that join the first side, a good handful join the middleground and the gaming side of the fence.
I don't see bad press as really being a hinderence.
The only thing worse than getting talked about is not getting talked about, after all.
Or. to quote the shmuck who ripped off Wilde, the only bad publicity is no publicity.