Stephanie Gutmann’s spirited defense of Mel Gibson’s penchant for using homosexual characters as comic relief, or, la Braveheart, signifiers of weakness and villainy, was unworthy of your magazine. (“Mel Gibson, One of Us, ” Sept. 25.)
After all, it’s one thing to criticize the left-leaning political agenda of certain “gay rights” activists, but quite another to wink at callow mean- spiritedness, and conservatives who engage in the latter ought to be called to account. To offer the excuse that the characters” sexual orientation needed to be established “quickly via visual cues” raises the question of whether deploying grotesque, Fagin-like Jews as a quick means of establishing religious identity would trigger the same nonchalance.
By the way, the “swishy bartender” in Gibson’s Bird on a Wire was actually a swishy hairdresser. When Gibson does stereotypes, he goes all the way.
STEPHEN H. MILLER, WASHINGTON, D.C.
