I've been saying this for years.
If a boy and a girl are even in vague proximity of each other, people will assume there's something between them. This is true in real life, and doubly so in fiction. People will earnestly ship characters that have "such amazing chemistry" because they looked at each other once. Or spent a couple of seconds in the same room.
And yet any idea of same-sex attraction is fervently denied with ludicrous justifications, no matter how well two people go together. No matter how obviously they flirt, and are fond of each other. It's so tiring.
And still there was this fucker a while back who dared to utter "we don't insert hetero into everything" while whining about forced gayness in something or other. I'm still not sure if they were disingenuous, or completely fucking oblivious. I can believe the latter, honestly. It's just so "normal" for them.
A single gay romance is excessive pandering, but a thousand straight ones doesn't even register as part of the scale.