I don't really think they are, I think it's more that society is now more tolerant of people expressing what might be seen as deviances in public than was previously the case. It really isn't that long since things like homosexuality and the like were considered moral transgressions worthy of scorn and hatred. Go a little further back and they were crimes worthy of execution. So it's not even slightly surprising that people kept such things, and things rather considerably more deviant, to themselves. Let's not even talk about what would have happened to social deviants back in the 15th/16th centuries...