Every time my family brings up some character they believe "didn't need to be gay", I start bringing up movies I know they like that have unnecessarily ham-fisted romances that make no sense.
To all the people who think Pacific Rim would have been improved by Raleigh and Mako kissing at the end, you are wrong. There was 0 need for romance in a movie about giant robots beating the shit out of giant alien monsters.
Most action movies don't need their little romance subplots, yet they're everywhere.
Most movies would be mostly unchanged if you took out any romantic entanglement at all.
9/10 times, they're all unnecessary.
But if they're going to be crammed in, they should be representative. Lgbtq+ exist. They deserve representation.
My family has mostly stopped mentioning it around me.