Not sure if this quite fits your bill, but John Ashbery was a gay man living and writing in New York through the 60s and 70s. His writing has this tendency to circle around and around without ever quite naming the thing - Soonest Mended being a pretty good example of his style. Not sure if there's anything so much like a dog whistle in his work, but I personally found his occlusive style really resonated with me