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B. They were largely tolerated - some times even respected - by their Heterosexual peers.

C. They were able to network and develop secret means of recognition.

D. They were able to form friendships through mutual adversity.
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On a less positive note, many who returned from the second World War - Heterosexual as well as Homosexual - were changed for the worse. Some were troubled by what they had seen and experienced. They were rootless, antisocial and self destructive.
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02. Motorcycle Clubs:
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It's widely accepted that the American military was the genesis of American motorcycle clubs. The Harley-Davidson company and the Indian Motorcycle Company supplied motorcycles in the first World War and Harley-Davidson provided 90 thousand motor bikes for the allies during World War II. Afterwards some GIs brought back the bikes they rode on during the conflict. But for those that hadn't, they were still able to purchase Army surplus motorcycles at a pittance. Many free-wheeling Veterans spent their weekends driving from town to town and drinking at bars. Many of these mounted Veterans formed motorcycle clubs.
As the authors of one motorcycle history put it:
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"The genealogy of the "bad biker" starts loosely after World War II, when US service men returned after taking part in a conflagration that saw over 50 million people slaughtered .... Upon returning home, they found it wasn't the same. Some of them climbed on motorcycles and wandered the byways and highways of America looking for answers to unanswerable questions or teamed up with their war buddies, either because they felt safer in the company of their brothers-under-arms or they didn't quite fit back into the relatively low ebb of civilian life. Motorcycles maybe gave them back the edge they needed, the adrenaline rush they had experienced so often in combat".
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Hunter S. Thompson writes much the same thing:
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"The whole thing [the outlaw biker scene] was born, they say, in the late 1940s, when most ex-GIs wanted to get back to an orderly pattern: college, marriage, a job, children - all the peaceful extras that come with a sense of security. But not everybody felt that way. Like the drifters who rode west after Appomattox, there were thousands of Veterans in 1945 who flatly rejected the idea of going back to their pre-war pattern. They didn't want order, but privacy - and time to figure things out. It was a nervous, downhill feeling, a mean kind of angst that always comes out of wars .... a compressed sense of time on the outer limits of fatalism. They wanted more action, and one of the ways to look for it was on a big motorcycle. By 1947 the state of California was alive with bikes, nearly all of them powerful American-made irons from Harley-Davidson and Indian".
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Many adopted the names of their club after World War II fighter squadrons such as the "Hell's Angels". While many motorcycle clubs were strictly Heterosexual, some were not. While many motorcycle clubs did not encourage Sᴀᴅᴏᴍᴀsᴏᴄʜɪsᴍ, some clubs did.
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03. Leather Uniforms:
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The original Leather jackets were brown flight jackets that Army pilots took home with them after the war and used to keep warm while cycling.
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04. Colors:
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Today, Members of both Leather clubs and motorcycle clubs wear "Colors" (large patches that identify their club affiliation) on the back of their Leather vests and Leather jackets. The Colors are a source of great Pride for the Membership and they will go to great lengths to prevent their theft by or recover from rival clubs. It's very likely that this can be traced from the American and European military traditions of regimental and troop Colors - the Flags and standards that served the vital role of rallying point during battle. The soldiers entrusted with the Colors protected them zealously - sometimes to their death.
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In battle, Colors were more than symbols of Pride and Patriotism.
They served a vital role in life and death struggles. In order to fight successfully - and hopefully survive their battles - it was necessary for fighting units to stay together - whether they were advancing, retreating or staying put. In the chaos of battle and under difficult visual conditions (such as night fighting or thick clouds of gun smoke), the unit's Colors were the best way of identifying where the fighting unit was at any one time.
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If the Colors were lost, so was the unit.
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This might explain why today's Leathermen still take great pains to protect their Colors from rival clubs.