Yes, people who don’t follow the primary social narrative (which, funnily enough, revolves around being white, cis, heterosexual, male-and-dominant or female-and-submissive, and so on and so forth) have always been seen as a threat. For a small amount of time, a group consisting primarily of gay men with minimal demands (i.e. stop directly physically harming us and, later, change a couple of forms) were in a political position in the West such that they couldn’t be ignored.