Possible, but remember that long-distance travel was not particularly common before the 20th century, so venereal disease outbreak would likely affect only one locality at a time.
However, modern experience has been something along the lines of what you have suggested: the AIDS epidemic has slowed (but by no means halted) the rampant carnality of many homosexual men. The novelty of our times has been the homosexual couple seeking legal and societal normalization as a societal unit on equal footing with a married couple.
In this case I was not referring to “veneral disease” as such, but rather to the many, many infectious diseases anal sex does such a dandy job of transmitting. They aren’t normally referred to as STDs even though they are indeed transmitted primarily sexually.
You hear very little about these outside of specialty medical journals because it isn’t politically correct to discuss the huge number of health problems caused by homosexual behavior, especially when promiscuous. AIDS is the only one talked about, and the normal spin on it implies that it is somehow Reagan’s fault.