With layovers and flight delays seemingly becoming the norm these days, it’s common for travelers waiting in airports to head to the nearest newsstand to find a newspaper or magazine to pass the time.

But gays who visit at least one major airport in the Washington, D.C., area may not be able to get their favorite gay-themed magazines. At least two of the major news retailers with stores located in Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport do not carry gay-themed magazines.

Calls to the Hudson News and Faber News & Gifts stands in the airport confirmed that neither of the shops carry gay-themed magazines, including the Advocate, Out and Genre. Repeated calls to the Capital Travelmart, a third news retailer in the airport, were met by busy signals.

Hope Remoundos, the senior vice president of sales and marketing for the Hudson Group, the company that owns Hudson News, said the decision to stock magazines in their stores is ultimately decided by the size of the store and customer demand.

“A lot of what we do depends on the size of the location,” Remoundos said. “Everything depends on the size of the store when it comes to determining the quantity of the product you would sell.”

Hudson News is one of the major news retailers in airports across the country, and for the past five years has been named Best News & Gift Operator by the Airport Revenue News, a magazine covering the airline retail industry.

Officials at the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation said news retailers should stock gay magazines to better serve their overall customer base.

“I think all of those magazines are all well-respected publications that serve the gay and lesbian community, and there’s no reason why they shouldn’t be on the newsstands next to similar magazines,” said Cathy Renna, GLAAD’s news media director. “There’s no reason why the Advocate shouldn’t be next to Newsweek, or why Out shouldn’t be next to Details.”

REMOUNDOS SAID THAT nearly all of the company’s stores carried between 500 and 3,000 titles each. She also confirmed that while the Reagan National stores did not sell gay-themed news and lifestyle magazines, it and the two other major local airports — Baltimore-Washington International and Washington Dulles International — do carry magazines featuring nude women, such as Playboy.

She said the reason to carry men’s magazines and not gay magazines is mostly based on customer demand.

“There’s no issue with [selling gay-themed magazines], it’s just that when you’re limited to the quantity of what you can sell, you have to base what you sell on what the customers are asking for,” Remoundos said. “So if there’s a greater demand, certainly the likelihood goes up.”

And sometimes, knowing that there is a greater demand for certain types of magazines leads to them being placed in airport newsstands. For instance, Hudson News stores in BWI until recently did not carry gay magazines. However, once gays started complaining to the company that the stores didn’t offer the title they were looking for, the shops began selling both the Advocate and Out.

Gay-themed magazines are also sold at the company’s stores at Dulles, Remoundos said. She said the diversity of its customer base was very important to Hudson, and the company is happy to stock gay magazines in individual stores if the demand is there.

Renna suggested gays make it a point to ask for the magazines the next time they are in the airport.

“What I would encourage flyers to do is when they go through Reagan National, ask them if they carry those titles, and if not, ask them why they don’t,” Renna said.

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