YouTube.com ought to have the SNL skit on the Raging Queen, but I can’t find it. Pirates don’t get any gayer than that… unless it’s Cap’n Jack Sparrow.
I doubt the “vast majority” would agree with you. But if so, they’d be just as wrong.
Many years ago I was a member of a gay libertarian group, and at one of our meetings some members of NAMBLA were there. At no time did I get the impression that I was in the company of gay men . . . or straight men. They gave me the impression of being totally asexual, but in a very dark, creepy, sinister way. I couldn’t wait to get away from them. It turns out, the other members felt exactly the same way about them. Just thinking about that experience gives me the willies. I have known literally thousands of gay men over the years; believe me, those guys weren’t gay.
Obligatory-The Adventures of Miles Cowperthwaite
Can’t find the video online.
Gay pirates? It sounds to me like like something someone just pulled out of their ass.
Dammit, now I’ve got the theme song from The Love Boat stuck in my head…
Geez, guys, post twelve! 
Sorry for overlooking your post. But without a link or description of the book, it would have been difficult for the OP to confirm that this was the one he was looking for.
I know (and you’re right), I just had to throw it out there. No worries. 
Sorry - should have given you some credit, but the point is, I read an article in a newspaper and, considering the time frame didn’t fit (late 70’s newspaper article) to when that book was published (early 80’s), it didn’t make sense.
However, in reading that Wiki book link, the author states that he gave a lecture in the late 70’s (before the book was later published) that hit the wires - and that was most certainly the article I read.
So yes, pravnik, you were correct with the book title (thanks), but it took that Wiki link to the intro of the book for me to figure out I wasn’t crazy and actually had read this article in 1978 or 1979, years before the actual book publication date.
Upon reflection, I think after reading the article I even went to a few bookstores to find the book back then, but as it had not been published, they obviously couldn’t find a listing yet.
BTW, thanks all for your help! Some of the comments were interesting - but would perhaps better be suited for Humble Opinion or Great Debates. For instance, other than stories about Caribbean pirates, references in that intro also mentioned Knights Templar and the French Foreign Legion as other male societies where open homosexuality might have been more than just tolerated, but perhaps even encouraged or at least a large part of the reason some men joined.
It doesn’t take a great stretch of the imagination to think that men who were homosexual back then might be more inclined to join a society that was exclusively male and were in far off locations where they formed their own social (and sexual) bonds.
That was pretty good!
I think it would have worked better as “Hard vessels full of seamen…” but still A- material there.
This pretty much proves that pirates were gay. (sorry, I couldn’t find the actual vid clip)
Related thread - sort of.
But I think it’s worth pointing out that even if those pirates practiced a lot of sodomy, they weren’t gay in the modern sense (ie, “I’m not attracted to women because I was born that way”) but rather in the Ancient Greek sense of “hey, why not?” (also known as, “sexual attraction being bound by gender is largely a cultural concept”)
I think it makes quite a difference, in the context of the OP about a 70s gay mag.
Quite the reverse, in the case of situational homosexuality. In such cases, no females of any age are available. When only males are available, men of heterosexual orientation will frequently prefer to have sex with adolescent boys, since they are smaller, relatively delicate, and less hairy than fully adult males and so have more feminine characteristics. (They may also seek out adult males with similar characteristics.) When ashore, the same men prefer to have sex with adult women.
Males of homosexual orientation of course vary in their preference for physical type, but would be more likely to have sex with adult masculine men than those who are basically heterosexual.
It’s like guys in jail say, “If you’re on top, you ain’t gay.”
Since when do we rely on random street interviews when defining medical terms?
You can try and twist this anyway your specific social group tells you to, but to the average person around the world, a man who has sex with other males is homosexual. You cant change the definition of a word to suit your own agenda.
Start a poll, even here on the Dope, I would guess that the majority of posters would agree with the simple dictionary definition of homosexual that I paraphrased above
ETA—I am not interseted in semantic games with parties who are clearly argueing from a biased point of view. If it makes you feel better, I concede that only definitions that are pleasing to you and yours are valid. NO one is homosexual unless all other homosexuals agree on it.
I can’t say as I agree with the idea that the majority opinion is always controlling when defining a minority population. Thirty years ago, if you took a poll among 100 random people on the street about the difference between a homosexual and a pedophile, you’d likely learn that, to the vast majority of people, there was no difference: homosexuals were seen as predators and threats to children.
On top of this is the fact that these words have specific medical definitions, and it’s not uncommon for specific terms of art to be vastly distorted when they pass outside of their particular field and into general usage. There are a large number of medical, legal, and scientific terms that are commonly misused by people outside of those fields. Is a psychologist who insists that schizophrenia is not the same thing as multiple personality disorder “twisting the word to suit his specific social group?”