Gays used to stay in the closet, where, it was believed, they belonged.
After an admiring review of Grizzard's wit, the author turns on the writer for peddling a nostalgic vision of a homogeneous pre-integration  Grizzard's idealized South was the world before feminists and affirmative action, when gays stayed in the closet where they belonged, where America pretty much meant the world of small-town white folks like him.