I'm not too clear on what was written when precisely, but yeah, when I think of fantasy in the 1980s and early 1990s, I think of Eddings, Brooks, Dragonlance, and the like. Donaldson stands out, and I think Fionavar Tapestry was probably also written then... though of course that doesn't exactly distance itself from Tolkien very far.

I had never thought about the sexuality thing as having to do with when Eddings wrote his works, though - his later works were written only twenty years ago, and I don't usually think of the eighties and nineties as being that much more prudish than the 00s...