TBH if anything this annoys me they are 20-30 years out of date and this is just marketing. I am far from homophobic – indeed the opposite – I remember when me and two other lads went to the anarchist bookshop in our town in the 80s. Me and the other straight chap were looking at books on pirate radio stations and anarchy etc (which is what you expect to find there).
our third friend had just come out. He bought a copy of Gay Times as then (1987/88, might be +/- 6 months) W H Smiths thought it was unacceptable to stock it. He hid it inside his jumper, as he feared that if older casuals saw him they might beat him up (even though I then dressed like and to some extent still do like a casual). Yet me and the other chap could freely display our anarchist magazines (it would be prudent to hide them if you were going past the Police station where the CID office was, but we took the other route).
a few years later and until the recent economic depressions, attitudes changed and it wasn’t even thought of (outside hardcore religious communities) as wrong or dirty or sinful to be gay. But this freedom was fought for and people got hurt and killed to preserve it, and things are now sliding back down to the bad times.
