Hmmmmm, maybe. You make good points, but I was out to a lot of people in the eighties and it wasn't all THAT dangerous.

But plenty of gay people did stay closeted even to close friends and family members, so it's not wildly out of line for the episodes to play out the way they have.

Still, the showrunners can, if they choose, make things explicit even without a coming-out scene or frank conversation between characters acknowledging sexual orientation.

If they continue to keep things in the background and never fully face the issue, I think that kind of is queer baiting.