The situation of the male cousin is extremely complicated to parse from outside the UK, and everyone I know from Northern Ireland has fallen on it with glad cries of delight. He isn't gay, to begin with, but he is illegitmate and Catholic and has an English accent, so in the context of the time he has to trade off being considered gay in a girls' school (in a country that only legalised male homosexual activity in 1982) or be murdered for being too English in a boys' school.