I haven’t really had to deal with this, as I’m in a counseling masters program. Being okay with gay is kind of a requirement of being a professional counselor. So all my professors and advisers have been non-judgey and supportive.
Good luck in your search!

Do you know any 2nd or 3rd years that are more familiar with the various professors who could at least let you know if any of them are homophobes? It’s generally been my experience that once someone has been to school long enough to get a doctorate, they are generally pretty open-minded, but obviously not 100% of the time. I don’t know if that helps you or not. Good luck!

What area of biology?

I’m a second year in a biology PhD. My advisor is pretty open-minded, as is the faculty in general – another prof in biology is openly gay – so it was not really an issue for me. At my university, graduate students go directly to work with their advisor of choice, and given that my advisor didn’t bat an eye to my alternative hairstyle and androgynous presentation during my interview :P I figured he would be ok with me being me, which he is. In your place I would go with my gut feeling about the lab environment, since you did rotations there, if any of the labs ever made you feel uncomfortable. And also, like Andrea mentioned above, talk to other grad students in the department to see what the community’s like.

thanks for your advice all! (I had an exam this week and between that/lab/teaching i’ve been virtually cut off from the internet, otherwise I would’ve said thanks earlier :P) what complicates things for me a little bit is that all the rotations I’ve done are with very, very new professors, as in I’m pretty sure all of them have been here for less than a year, maybe a year and a half at most. and they’re all straight dudes and I’ve met all of their wives and in some cases their kids. I wear a lot of plaid and have a fairly Altnernative Lifestyle Haircut and just generally look “really gay” as I’ve been told, but I’ve noticed that some people just… don’t pick up on it.

I remember from my interviews from talking to one of the students then that the students in my department are pretty quiet and keep to themselves, not big partiers, etc (my program is really fractured and not close knit at all). I’m also not out to any of my fellow students which doesn’t really help. It’s just never come up.

There is one lab I’m leaning towards that I felt very comfortable in but that one might be tricky to get into, so I’m trying to keep my options open!