It kind of still is. Most people who oppose "teh gays" mostly talk about male-male..

Lesbians have been fetishized because it feeds into a FFM threesome fantasy. The entire setup is just aimed at straight men who are single or unhappy with their marriage. All too often when F/F relationships are portrayed like this, when the women are out together they are almost always flirty with other guys they meet, like they are trying to plant the seed that one lucky guy could be taken home with them.

While I certainly agree the audience was more than ready for M/M and bisexual male characters, we didn't see it nearly as much because the bigots in charge didn't fetishize it, and didn't want it front and center even as a B story because it was going to cause backlash, from themselves and other bigots like them.

I do not agree that this was about audience approval.

I pointed out to others in a Garak thread that before Garak was introduced (and before these two episodes), we already had Roy's gay son on Wings who intentionally defied all stereotypes, the gay male couple who owned the B&B in Northern Exposure and the reveal that the town's founders were lovers, not sisters, plus more than one episode with a gay man as positive characters in L.A. law and Roseanne. If you want to push it back further, you had Billy Crystal's character in Soap who did have stereotypical mannerisms, but they were really downplayed and he was one of the only decent members of his family.

The audience was ready for gay male characters on a show that already celebrated diversity. Berman was just a bigot.

Yes, but even there, Berman prevented characters from being gay and out, which is why he quashed what was very obviously intended to be a romantic relationship between Garak and Bashir. Both of them play their characters like there is a mutual attraction in the episode where Garak premieres.

Berman had reduced roles as each of the seasons went on but he still did the damage. Behind the scenes he's the primary reason Terry Farrel left the series, harassing her for literal years at that point and finally using his influence to try and financially dominate her, which she basically said fuck that and refused the contract.

While Nicole de Boer did an amazing job picking up the role with basically no build up or introduction that the character was due, the shoes she had to fill were just too big and the character suffered as even the writers were trying to figure out what to even do with the character. Various other rumors and things cast members have said have pretty much all pointed back to Berman about tensions on sets writers not being able to use the plots they wanted to run in the show because they didn't align with his bigoted views.

I mean…have you seen the Trek fan fiction?

I haven't. I'm just assuming everyone was writing about Kirk and Spock back in the day, too.

Actually it is season 5 episode 7:

While vacationing on Risa, Worf and Dax meet a group of fundamentalist protesters who claim that the Federation has gone soft.

Just watched this yesterday. Because I am a man of science.

Oh yes, that rings a bell. Good episode. Good acting too.