It's a headline writer's trick. It worked, didn't it? Got you to read the article? Of course, a scholarly article wouldn't be written that way, but this is popular throwaway journalism (like most of the stuff out there).
We are NOT relying on specific visual cues ie stereotypes - in fact, most of the time there is a gaydar ‘alert’ when someone LACKS such cues and often when that person takes great pains to adopt heterosexual mannerisms, speech, dress, etc.
Well, that is "your 'gaydar'" and it's so specific that it may not be shared by very many other people. Just what people mean by "gaydar" is hard to say. It may not be one thing. For some people it certainly does mean identifying people as homosexuals because of some very specific stereotype signs.
Certainly it's not hard to identify a lot of people correctly as homosexuals. But many other guesses people make will be off, since there are so many false positives -- so many heterosexuals with mannerisms that make people think they're gay. The article's basic idea is more or less valid (so far as I know), but hardly earth-shattering.
The point is that gaydar is intuition in the face of counterintuitive information.
Once again, I'm not sure that's what everyone means by the term. There seems to be something almost supernatural in what you're talking about. Do all your intuitions pan out?
It also may not be that free from stereotypes. People have been "spotting" the quarterback or Bachelorette contestant that they think is gay for some time, whether through "stereotype" gay behavior or through little tics and quirks that they think reveal that the person is hiding something. But I'm not sure those guesses or "intuitions" based on supposed cracks in the facade are any closer to the mark on average than any others.
The whole Jared Subway story is a case in point. So many people heard that he was involved in an underage sex scandal said that they "knew all along" that he was gay, but it turned out not to be true.
Why is that a requirement? Hell, if 25% of someone's intuitions were later confirmed despite superficial evidence that would be a remarkable success rate given the attempt to deceive.
The whole Jared Subway story is a case in point. So many people heard that he was involved in an underage sex scandal said that they "knew all along" that he was gay, but it turned out not to be true.
Erm, it's not a case in my point at all and therefore irrelevant.