This is especially interesting as same-sex dating is even more skewed toward online interaction, probably just due to the fact that we make up only ~5% of the population; any person we meet in public is straight 19 out of 20 times [1]. [1] https://cdn.static-economist.com/sites/default/files/images/...
Same sex dating is, sadly, still not entirely safe. A little anonymity and being out of arm's reach probably makes people feel a lot more comfortable (have you ever gone on a date when you were uncomfortable for some other reason? Did it end well?)
I don't recall if it was Dan Savage or something I read earlier than that, about how screwed gay men are in a mixed orientation environment, because a heterosexual male can use prolonged eye contact across a bar as an intro to approaching a woman, while some men see eye contact as aggression. If that person turns out to be a homophobe, the author theorizes that the odds of a violent end to this encounter has just gone up considerably. A gay bar or an online dating site sets a context, a social filter. If you crash and burn it's over quickly and you can move on.
If smart phones were available sooner I wonder how much faster that line would have gone up.