Mostly it was Viggo Mortensen and Sean Astin that made the comments that I recall. McKellan made a big point out of trying to out Elijah Wood, but he was outraged at the comments. It very well may have been another inside joke that they were not sharing - Wood purportedly has a reel of the outtakes where they acted intentionally gay in the filming for the laughs.
Judging by the amount of time and space given to Sean Astin and Eljiah Wood decrying the comments since then, this might very well be the case. Of course, the comments went around as headlines and the retractions/corrections have to fight for attention.
Sean Astin is a Democrat, but a moderate Democrat who’s done work for the Department of Defense. Viggo Mortensen, OTOH, is a flaming liberal and one of the biggest tools of all time.
On the other side, John Rhys-Davies, the actor who played Gimli, is a conservative.
Other than McKellan, I’m pretty sure the other guys were just clowning around.
Viggo’s an airhead and spoke out against the war (as did others). But, AFAIK, McKellan was the only one openly gay and verbal about it.
I could be wrong.