It's a regionnal idiosyncracy, not a sexual idiosyncracy. Around here It's always been pop, but in recent years the word coke has become almost a generic for a soft drink.
But Paulie, you seem to assign a lot of gay/not-gay sexual connotation to perfectly innocent terms (not that there's anything wrong with that!). As Freud is reputed to have said: "Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar." But as you said recently, "You're almost NEVER to take me seriously", and from that I conclude that you are a light hearted soul who is a little overly concerned with the "gayness" of things...hmmmh...
But here's a map that shows the inclination for preferences between the useages of the words 'pop', 'soda', 'coke', or others
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Above post made by a fellow Hoosier, who knows if you want a soda pop, you tell them you want a coke.
I am in the 80 to 100% range for my region using pop.
Soda, soda-pop, pop, cola, tonic, soft drink, coke...
Back in the day, drugstores (pharmacies or apothecaries) were small establishments and much as "gas stations" were then on about every corner. Pharmacies more commonly called "drugstores" were similarly located to attract customers needing things other than "drugs".
Most drugstores had a "soda fountain" with stool seating along a counter for customers to sit and chat and imbibe a soft drink.
At the soda fountain a person could buy a drink composed of "soda" or carbonated water with syrup added to the soda water giving it a sugary-caramel taste. Coca Cola first offered a popular syrup. Eventually, to make the soda more interesting, other flavors were added, for instance a "cherry" syrup, making a "cherry coke." It would have been commonplace in drugstores to call a fountain drink just a "soda" or a "coke" but not a bottle of pop, or simply "pop."
So what about the etymology of the word "pop" as opposed to the others?
Here's my theory: In our own area of the country, as I mentioned at the start of the age of the automobile, filling or gas stations were ubiquitous. Besides gasoline, like the drugstore, they had other attractions for customers like candy or food sold over the counter or bottles of "pop" of different brands submerged in a cooler of ice. When the cap was removed to open the bottle, there was a small "pop" sound which was only common to carbonated drinks. This name, it seems, would probably have been more common to rural areas where drugstore soda fountains were seen less often.
It's interesting that those early filling stations or gas stations were usually a small square building, one room in size, with a roof that extended out over the front to shelter the single pump so that a car could be gassed up sheltered from the weather. Around here there are some of these ancient artifacts of the age still intact. The huge roofed stations we find on the interstates have returned to the early roofed model, versus the corner station of the last half of the 20th century which were not roofed over, making the circle complete, proving the efficacy of the earliest station's model.
