Bret Easton Ellis Fights Back Against GLAAD’s Love Of “The Gay Man As Magical Elf”

The American Psycho author was wrist slapped by GLAAD for some of his tweets involving things like making an HIV joke and also saying Matt Bomer would be weird casting for the uber-straight role in the movie of Fifty Shades of Grey, considering the actor’s easy openness with being gay. ( I thought that one was off base too–the public can make leaps between actor and role–though at least Ellis is also mad that a straight plays a simpering gay on Modern Family and wins awards for it.)

What’s more, Ellis is pissed that the watchdog organization–and in fact, everyone–makes such a sanctimonious fuss over the coming out of people like basketball player Jason Collins! He says that kind of overdone celebration threatens to make those who are already out feel a little left out.

Ellis calls this the “Gay magical elf” syndrome, but he also mixes things up with a wildlife metaphor. In this out.com piece, Ellis says Collins was treated “as some kind of baby panda who needed to be honored and praised and consoled and–yes–infantilized by his coming out.” He says kid-glove-wearing George Stephanopoulos interviewed Collins as tenderly as if he were talking to a six-year-old.

Collins’ coming out was cool, admits Ellis, it’s just that the media’s fawning was patronizing and approached a whole other type of victimization.

Read the piece and find out why. Oh, and please come up with a strong reaction to it or you might become the kind of by-the-rules Gay Magical Elf that turns at least one American psycho.