The episode takes place after the September 2001 attack on New York - the detectives have bands on their badges, and American flags are prominently shown throughout. The first date shown onscreen is Tuesday October 24. This date aligns with calendar year 2000, 11 months before the 9/11/01 attacks.
Ray Burrows's lawyer claims that homosexuality was de-listed as a mental illness based solely on political grounds with no scientific research backing it. In fact, whether homosexuality was a mental illness was the subject of scientific inquiry dating to Evelyn Hooker's 1957 paper "The Adjustment of the Male Overt Homosexual".