"The fact that openly gay communities were still relatively small and geographically concentrated in a handful of urban areas created a distinctive gay culture. The central institutions for gay men were baths and bars, places where men met each other in highly sexualized contexts and where sex provided the commonality."
Some might call that "culture;" I don't -- except in the petrie-dish sense of the word.
In a saner age, the word "culture," meant Mozart, Da Vinci, Falkner -- artistic and intellectual excellence, the best and most cerebrally challenging of human endeavors. Now, "culture" means men groping each other in bars and baths?
When Rome fell, were the goths and vandals who tramped around its ruins part of a "culture," or were they an assemblage of barbarians? I say the latter.