What do you think about Garrison Keillor's article about flamboyant gay dress?

[LAS14]

This was posted in a reply in another DU thread as an example of Keillor's political incorrectness. From my perspective, anyone who has listened to him for any length of time knows that he is not homo-phobic. He points out in the beginning that he is talking about a stereotype (i.e., not the actual whole population) .He is complaining about flamboyant dress. Since when are we not allowed to have a negative opinion about an adult's dress? What do you think?

The country has come to accept stereotypical gay men — sardonic fellows with fussy hair who live in over-decorated apartments with a striped sofa and a small weird dog and who worship campy performers and go in for flamboyance now and then themselves. If they want to be accepted as couples and daddies, however, the flamboyance may have to be brought under control. Parents are supposed to stand in back and not wear chartreuse pants and black polka-dot shirts. That’s for the kids. It’s their show.

Sorry, I was unable to find a link to the original Salon article.
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2007/03/why-salon-running-garrison-keillors-ridiculous-stereotypes-gay-men/#

[LisaM]

1. He issued a (sort of) apology ten years ago.

I'm not defending or criticizing the apology, which I'll excerpt below. My only comment would be that in 2007 we, as a nation, were coming around to acceptance of gay marriage. I don't think we should have had to "come around to it", of course, but it was ten years ago and it had been used as a political football and wedge issue all over, in places like California and Ohio. That period of time seems like it was back in the bronze age now, but we were in the process of an enormous change for the better as far as marriage equality was concerned, and yes, there were a few growing pains. Anyway, here's his response from back then.

Ordinarily I don’t like to use this space to talk about my newspaper column but the most recent column aroused such angry reactions that I thought I should reply. The column was done tongue-in-cheek, always a risky thing, and was meant to be funny, another risky thing these days, and two sentences about gay people lit a fire in some readers and sent them racing to their computers to fire off some jagged e-mails. That’s okay. But the underlying cause of the trouble is rather simple.
I live in a small world—the world of entertainment, musicians, writers—in which gayness is as common as having brown eyes. Ever since I was in college, gay men and women have been friends, associates, heroes, adversaries, and in that small world, we talk openly and we kid each other and think nothing of it. But in the larger world, gayness is controversial. In almost every state, gay marriage would be voted down if put on a ballot. Gay men and women have been targeted by the right wing as a hot-button issue. And so gay people out in the larger world feel besieged to some degree. In the small world I live in, they feel accepted and cherished as individuals, but in the larger world they may feel like Types. My column spoke as we would speak in my small world and it was read by people in the larger world and thus the misunderstanding. And for that, I am sorry. Gay people who set out to be parents can be just as good parents as anybody else, and they know that, and so do I.

[LAS14]

2. Thanks for this. I took his original column in the spirit in which...

... he intended it, but I am impressed with his sense for the wider implications.