Dawg, what? There absolutely is the option of not having sex with each other. It feels like a case of internalized homophobia. "It's not gay because I said no homo" mentality. No entirely straight man is going to have the urge to have sex with another man, no matter how long of a dry spell he's been in. It sounds like Richard Rhodes and his friends had these feelings crop up, and did everything they could to avoid confronting them, because they'd grown up being so certain they were entirely straight. "We had no other options" was a way to absolve themselves of their feelings.
Edit - rereading this, I want to make it clear that this is not meant to be an attack on the idea you're implementing. On that front, I say hell yeah go for it - not my cup of tea, but I wholeheartedly support it. It's a criticism specifically of the idea that "they're straight, but they had no options". They aren't and they did, and that's okay.