This one may be a bit controversial, but I think that it was companies who weren’t ready for minorities in leading roles or gay romance options, not the customer. I realized this when I was in a Mass Effect Discord and people were talking about how in ME1, all romance options were meant to be bi but Bioware didn’t think people were “ready,” and it hit me that it was likely Bioware/EA who wasn’t ready to “risk” a homophobic minority to be pissy at them, even though ME1 already had a bi option “but was safe because he was a female alien, which makes all the difference.” Maybe people would have been “ready” sooner if companies weren’t so scared of losing tens of dollars due to homophobic minorities. It’s the same mindset as Disney using Supergirl or Catwoman as examples of why superhero movies starting women don’t work (using the worst-case scenario that is bad for many reasons other than the lead’s sex to justify not trying until after another company has the balls they lacked in this case).