Which makes you question just how subject to prejudice gays really were.

Literally no one cared/cares about the gays. It was always just a case of "keep that stuff out of the public view!"

Any story about a gay man being beat up was because he either tried coming on to a straight guy and his friends, was being an openly uncontrollable flaming faggot, or was trying to catfish a straight man into sex. Otherwise no one would know nor care.

Any time the stories about a gay man being attacked popped up, the details usually revealed some sort of degeneracy or other nefarious acts that had nothing to do with people just "hating the gays".