Lesbians are very "in" right now, says 1985?

By coincidence, the last two books I've read were both written in the mid 1980s. "Jitterbug Perfume" was relentlessly recommended to me by Jon, and "Watchmen" is not only one of Time magazine's 100 best novels, it's the awesome basis for a really bad movie that just came out.

*note the obvious 80s paperback book cover design

I'm used to reading a lot of books from the same time period in succession. English 142b, for example, would have me read 10 novels published in the same decade or so in about 10 weeks (actually, I'm almost certain that English 142b was a Shakespeare class, but you get the point). When you do this, you can't help but find patterns or similarities that reveal some of the happenings of the times.

One thing that sticks out in these two books from 25 years ago is the seemingly unnecessary inclusion of minor lesbian subplots. The subplot was so minor in "Watchmen" that both of the women were cut out of the movie, and the lesbians in "Jitterbug" seemed even at the time (I read it before the comic book) to be lesbians only because it would be cool to have lesbians. And not even cool in the "that's hot" kind of way, but cool in a "I'm so edgy and topical" kind of way.

*interesting sidenote, searching Google Images for "watchmen lesbians"
doesn't get you porn till page 6

So this makes me wonder, were lesbians big in the 80s, or is this, like my reading of multiple 80s books, just a coincidence? Or were the plots somehow important and I just managed to miss the significance?

Keep in mind I'm not complaining about the plots, I'm just saying they struck me as being really obvious and not terribly organic.