In my all boys Jesuit high school, we knew who was gay but if we started making trouble about it, we would be disciplined for unbecoming conduct toward a fellow student. This wasn't just a policy for gay kids but for each and every one of us.
If you wanted to hang around with other gay guys, you joined the theater group or the TV/Media group. We didn't need a self proclaimed group based on sexuality. And I guess that's what bothers me. If gay kids are being harassed and feel they need their own club to be "safe", then there's something very wrong with the discipline in the school and that is what should be fixed before a club like this is established.
Sexuality, and I mean heterosexuality, is generally over the top at high schools today. That was somewhat true even 20 years ago. That's why I was glad to go to a single sex school. My wife taught at a co-ed school in the 90's and the male/female shenanigans going on in stairwells and other nooks and crannies was shocking to her.
Perhaps a general reduction in "public displays of affection" and uniforms would help to desexualize the environment and reduce the need for homosexual students to feel like they need their own club to make out.
Yep, I attended an all boys NYC Jesuit High School from 1982-1986 and my experience is close to yours. It wouldn't be called a gay-friendly environmeent at all, but it wasn't notably hostile either.
Young people have to learn that beating on someone verbally or physically because they are different is not good.
That being said, it has come full circle: gay students in nyc now seek their own school (the Harvey Milk school) to feel safe. Esentially, self-segregation. So we as a culture went from segregation, to integration and acceptance, and then self-segregation. Silly and nutty - no student should be harmed by another student without severe consequences - that goes if the victim is too short, too fat, too skinny, too gay, too feminine, too masculine - whatever.