It's interesting that the author of this short story was forced to exaggerate the animosity between gays and straights so much. Clearly the idea was to invert the current status quo and show straights as oppressed...except just inverting society didn't do that, thus his point was ruined. So instead he had to create a cartoon society where people hunt down straights the way leftists believe that gays are and were hunted in times past.

In reality, sodomy laws on the books were ancient and almost never enforced by 1955, and the few that did exist didn't "outlaw being gay" but rather anal "sex" in particular (because it's filthy and spreads disease), so the story was at least a hundred years too late.

It's interesting that the author of this short story was forced to exaggerate the animosity between gays and straights so much. Clearly the idea was to "invert" the current status quo and show straights as oppressed...except just inverting society didn't do that, thus his point was ruined. So instead he had to create a cartoon society where people hunt down straights the way leftists believe that gays are and were hunted in times past.

In reality, sodomy laws on the books were ancient and almost never enforced by 1955, and the few that did exist didn't "outlaw being gay" but rather anal "sex" in particular (because it's filthy and spreads disease), so the story was at least a hundred years too late.