If gay truth be told

The fears in “When Gay Lost Its Outre” by Mary McNamara [April 25] made me sick. Ohhh, we are going to lose so much if gay culture gets mainstreamed. Well, I can think of some things I can’t wait to lose -- outrageous sexuality being the definition of the gay culture, the religious right’s belief that we are all deviant because they equate being gay with being sexual.

Heterosexual artists, writers and just ordinary folk don’t define themselves as heterosexuals. As members of the dominant class, they define themselves as daughters, sons, husbands, wives, mothers and fathers; as nurses, doctors, scientists, cooks, politicians. As good-hearted souls or selfish louts. And gosh, those crazy heterosexual writers. Can they be edgy because they aren’t marginalized and aren’t outrageous?

Maybe, just maybe, there are a few characters caught up in good stories -- or even grand ones -- that show gay people having the same angst and struggle of “heterosexual” drama. And gosh, maybe the stories can be quality art.

Thea Iberall

Long Beach

Thea Iberall is the writer in residence at the OUT Theatre in Long Beach.

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I found Mary McNamara’s article to be right on target as to what I’ve seen and experienced in the gay culture for the past several years. Quite frankly, the new generation of gay men has lost the panache, the edginess of their brothers of the ‘70s and early ‘80s.

The new generation’s fashion sense of wearing baseball caps, Abercrombie & Fitch uniforms and board shorts is part of the blending into the heterosexual mainstream American culture, and has cost America a unique individual creative style in fashion, recreation and lifestyle. In fact, I believe that the gay community has been “out-gayed by the straights” due to the blending-in process that McNamara’s article addresses.

The gym is now the straight guy’s pickup spot, and the D & G shirt and the $150 G Star jeans showing a well-toned body are more than likely on the guy who just met a girl at Crunch gym in West Hollywood and is now having drinks at a hip club on Sunset listening to Indian-inspired edgy music from England.

The heterosexual world learned to be hip from gays, and the new gay man has worked so hard to be like the rest of America that he is now just boring.

Michael McGinley

Los Angeles