Hi! It’s heavily covered in the New York City context in the book Stonewall: the riots that sparked the gay revolution by David Carter. Basically, back in the day, most gay men had nowhere to partake in homosexual behavior. They couldn’t rent hotels and many did not have the privacy to do so at home, and therefore couldn’t do it safely at home. So there were certain public areas known for “cruising” including along Central Park where gay men would go to pick up one another. Basically it was understood that if you were there, you were a man who was looking to participate in sexual activity with another man. There were secret codes of behavior and language that developed around it because the men still couldn’t just walk up to another man and say, “Hi, do you want to have sex?” They were also constantly getting arrested by the police who patrolled the cruising spots and often entrapped the men.

Cruising was born out of necessity. Certainly those men would have preferred to be at home and in private.