Wait you guys accepted people that wore ear rings back in the day?
Even I am not old enough to remember pirates.
Until about the mid-1970s there were lots of subtle gay signals, such as wearing a scarf around your neck (100% gay, of course) but if the knot was on the left it meant you preferred one thing, and if the knot was on the right it meant that you liked something else.
It was all very arcane and I never knew much about it, but I was scared and embarrassed one day when I was leaning up against a wall with 1 foot on the ground and the other knee bent with the sole of my foot flat against the wall. I was approached, pretty aggressively, by some ruffians who took it as a signal that I was looking for gay action.