Hello - I'm relatively new, so of course I choose the most controversial topic to reply to...
There was a very intertesting
articleon LOTR on Salon.com a while back - the full story ts here if you can have access.
"Despite what some critics have suggested, I see no homosexual element in "The Lord of the Rings"; rather, it is a "homosocial" realm of intimate, affectionate relationships among men, of a kind that has virtually vanished from modern life. From his school days in Birmingham onward, Tolkien spent his intellectual life in just such a realm, sharing his innermost thoughts and visions with Lewis and other friends around firesides and in Oxford pubs. Frodo and his courageous servant Sam -- who indeed saves the entire quest from disaster -- undoubtedly love each other, and their love is both physical and emotional, in fact platonic in the truest sense. Tolkien intended to reflect the complex cross-class relationships between man and officer, servant and master, that he had encountered as a World War I lieutenant."
Also read an interesting article by Neva Chonin in the
San Francisco Chronicle on a similar subject. "...the fellows of the Fellowship openly express affection for one another with no erotic strings attached. In contemporary culture, which views almost all (nonviolent) physical contact between men as transgressive, it's a courageous and even radical concept."
Just passing along some interesting thoughts,
EG