I will confess, I've occasionally considered the stereotypical "gay guy" voice and wondered why that is taken up by so many gay men.
This article …
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=19934
… helped crystallize the realization that we all select / affect accents and intonations and vocabulary and such to align with the group(s) we identify with. People get a baseline imprint from their surroundings, but sometimes reject that local norm in whole or in part for how they want to identify with others. I know I, myself, latch onto words and pronunciations that are not standard Colorado (or California), just because of the associations I make with them and the "tribal" affiliation I want to express (e.g., "Hey, look, I'm an Anglophile and pedant and proud of it!").
Given that, it's not at all surprising that there's a "gay guy" voice, just as there's an "academic" voice or a "just plain folk down-home" voice or a "black" voice or "rich people" voice or a [insert region] voice, or a …. It's not necessarily a bad thing, it's just a thing. There's nothing particularly natural about any given accent, just, at most, a sense of what is majority / normative. The only issue I see is the degree to which we let such lingual tribalism divide us, the extent to which it is something that is used to define Others ("You sound different, therefore you are bad") vs defining Us ("Hey, I sound like you, we have a connection!").
Perhaps this is just the natural tendency for people in any environment to adapt to what its normal accepted inflections. The only exception is for those who have a trained voice, either for speech, singing or drama, then the objective acquire what is known as a neutral accent. Tuition and practice over a long period of time usually neutralizes dialect and it is difficult to detect where the speaker originates from.
Ask Bruce
No. I've met gay guys who wish they didn't sound effeminate
And I have known guys who are gay and there is no way you would know by the way they speak.
Before reading the article, I wondered if part of the "gay guy" voice may have been a means of identification when this group of people was underground. Therefore one would think that the "voice" might fade over time as the culture becomes more open.
Then I saw the thing about American teenage boys' voices getting deeper and realized that this may not happen.
+John E. Bredehoft The thought had occurred to me. I suspect that, with the gay population able to be openly out to such a degree, that a goodly part of "gay culture" will start to fade (something that's actually been suggested as a bad thing about Obergefell and similar things), similar to immigrant culture (e.g., I have an interest in my Italian heritage, I have family recipes and traditions, etc., but I don't speak Italian, don't attend Italian cultural events, etc.).
On the other hand, the nature of being gay (or straight, or whatever one's inclination(s)) enforces community and association in a way that other racial / ethnic / cultural groups do not. Gay people will still seek out gay people for at least some key aspects of their lives. That reinforcement might keep some of that cohort's cultural traits (including voice) intact to some degree in a way that immigrant culture did not once folk left the ethnic neighborhoods.
It sounds as though you think the voice is cultural. Most of the time, it's innate. Few people really want to sound gay.
Just listen to people you know well after they have spent an extended period in another country and you will find, although completely unintentionally they will have adapted to the particular dialect. You subconsciously adsorb peculiarities of the company your keep,