To your average gay person, Rod and Bob were two minor celebrities whose story may have entertained them briefly, and all of us consume celebrities' images on a regular basis. This essay, for example, is not something that the broadest group of gay readers will find much satisfaction in reading. The crappiest, blandest gay culture is spread around the most because it is the most intelligible, because it requires the least amount of prerequisite knowledge. People don't consider a complex and sophisticated outlook on the world and then decide to embrace a simplistic, superficial one instead. The simplistic understanding is the best understanding that they have yet attained.
Many gay people are still at very basic levels of self-acceptance.
That their first impulse is often to consume stereotypical but optimistic images of gay life is not really so shocking or strange. And I can't make myself think that this is anything but a good thing.