Just listened to this one. On the surface, I found the character of Bob to be very amusing and very well narrated, and I loved the mental image of a tiny fairy flitting around stereotypically macho firefighters while asking them to make him a little almond milk with cinnamon in top. But I felt a little uncomfortable at first with the story as a parable for gay acceptance. I've never met a gay man as ridiculously stereotypical as Bob. Frankly, I wouldn't mind hearing a story about a gruff, typically macho firefighter who fights fires by day and comes home to the loving arms of his boyfriend at night.
But by the end of the story, I was seeing it in a different way. For all of his flirtatious behavior towards the men, we don't know if Bob is actually homosexual. We don't know anything about his sexuality. We don't know if he even has a sexuality, the way that we understand it. We don't know how fairies work in that universe. All we know is that Bob's behavior is far removed from what we consider masculine, and the way he talks and acts, in close proximity to such a cauldron of masculinity, sets off some men's fearful homophobia.
I think a huge amount of what we consider homophobia is not just fear and hatred of homosexuality, but fear and hatred of a lack of traditional masculinity. A boy who acts like a girl might get called a sissy and be excluded and beaten up, no matter what his sexual orientation is.
We don't know if Bob is gay or not, but because he's an effeminate little fairy, it almost doesn't matter. Some people will still be uncomfortable around him.
And on a totally different note, I kept wondering about how supernatural creatures fit into the larger world, beyond fire-fighting. We keep hearing about Stephen's experiences in Iraq; does the American military have supernatural creatures working with them there? Do the insurgents?