"While it's a nice thought that you, your family, and your friends, straight and gay, celebrating diversity and a rainbow of fruit flavors may not consider it a gay musical, you'd find the opposite among many other viewers."
I'm sure you can find just about anything true among many viewers of Rent. It doesn't mean they actually paid attention to the story or theme of the show. It just means they may have focused on one aspect without analyzing the whole. Your comment about celebrating diversity is actually one of the strongest themes of the show, not homosexuality. Did you not pick up on that?
Homophobia? Where did that come from? If you want to call Rent a gay musical, go ahead, but it doesn't change the fact that it's not. It's just ignoring the actual themes of the show and boiling it down to a narrow-minded view of the sexual preference of some of its characters (and the idea of celebrating diversity as your belittling comments show). If the musical's story is not about being gay or centered on gay lifestyle, then how is it a gay musical? The two gay couples in the show were never the central story line. The heterosexual couple was the axis upon which the entire story revolved.
Examples of gay musicals:
Faggot
Lovers
Joseph McCarthy is Alive and Living in Dade County
Gulp!
In Trousers
Boy Meets Boy
I Like Me Like This
March of the Falsettos
La Cage aux Folles
In Gay Company
Ten Percent Review
In Search of the Hammer
The Return of the Hammer
Dirty Dreams of a Clean-Cut Kid
Falsettoland
An Unfinished Song
All That He Was
Get Used to It
The Ballad of Mikey
Cruisin'
Fairy Tales
Most Men Are
Only Heaven Knows
The Gay 90s
The Last Session
Pageant
The Boy From Oz
Naked Boys Singing
The Rainbow Room
A New Brain
Hedwig and the Angry Inch
Ship in a Bottle
Bed, Boys and Beyond
Cowboys!
Prodigal
Dirty Little Showtunes
Portraits
Pinafore!
The Big Voice: God or Merman?
The Pink Files
Convenience
The Sissy Show
A Man of No Importance
Pyrates
"What can you expect from a bunch of seitan worshippers?" - Reginald Tresilian