Oh, of course. Gay is a political label that was forged by a reclamation of Freudian medicalization of same-gender desires. It really came to fruition in the twenties, flourishing in places like Germany and France. There's now distinct gay cinema, literature and music, plus a whole wealth of cultural references ranging from Act Up to Tom of Finland that most people won't be privy to. Actually, Act Up is probably queer, a political splinter of gay that one might argue is the torchbearer of Stonewall militancy. While gay and queer cultures often overlap and share spaces, queer people have their own cultural references and radical philosophies on gender that people who identify as gay probably won't understand or even know of. Muddy stuff, I know, but gay is a Marxian class identity that denotes far more than a mere taste for people of the same gender.