You know, the 50s may be so far into the rejection of homosexuality that it was literally unthinkable. And when things become unthinkable, people don’t have the same objections that they have when something is thinkable-but-wrong.
I have a gay friend who spent some time in Bulgaria as a young adult. Where, I gather, gay male sex was unthinkable. He told me had sex with guys who asserted that there was no such thing as gay sex, or that no one did it, or some such bizarre comment. He told me that he said, “but we just HAD SEX” and the guy pretty much ignored what he said.
Now, I’m pretty sure my friend is a bottom, and the guys he had sex with didn’t think the topping they did was “homosexual”. (And in a lot of places, the distinction society draws between “straight” and “not-straight” for men is between whether a guy consents/seeks out being a bottom, not who or what he has sex with as a top.) But still, it was just unthinkable.
Another example of “unthinkable” that I’ve heard of is a friend who is polyamorous, and lives with two women. They were buying a new mattress, and all of them wanted to try out the mattress and see if they liked it. They said as much to the salesman, who simply didn’t hear them, and kept assuming the women were sisters or some other weird construct. (The woman look nothing like each other.)
So I wouldn’t be shocked that Crane’s experience is true, and that it could happen precisely BECAUSE homosexuality was so totally unthinkable.