"What's in a name"

Alan Bray's essay confused me or maybe it was set that way. For the first two sections, he tries to differentiate between a sodomite and a masculine friend. My conclusion from that is, "They are the same thing." It was most likely that he meant this message, though. In the Masculine Friend section, he uses diction that resembles people talking about homosexual relationships without talking about homosexual relationships. "Intense personal friendship," "affection," "teasing," and "emotional" all crop up in the description of the totally straight and masculine friendship. I guess it depended on how much society disliked a person rather than the dynamics of the actual relationship/friendship.