One of those G-Witch things I don't really see people talk about that much is how the reality of gay relationships being "commonplace" despite how deeply misogynistic and patriarchal Spacian society actually is works as a great microcosm of the show's themes regarding gender and capitalism.
Surface level, it's true. Gay people don't seem to be openly discriminated against in Space Future, represented by the fact that this teenage girl's forced marriage could potentially be to anyone. Anyone of any gender could theoretically become Holder without much of an issue.
But it's basically the same as the duels themselves, yeah? A lot has already been written on the hypocrisy of the school oath, how the mobile suit duels aren't really the even playing field that they claim to be. The fact of the matter is that the actual winner will always be the person who had the opportunity for the best pilot training and the capital to build the best mobile suit. More to the point, anyone could challenge the Holder for the title, but the actual meta of the competition works out to be a fight between three dudes who all have the backing of the three biggest companies within the Group, all of them using the sexual slavery of this teenage girl as a means of furthering their monopolistic control over technology.
The veneer of liberal acceptance (gay relationships are commonplace on a personal level) masks that Ad Stella is still just as deeply patriarchal as modern reality. A world that can tell you that love is love out one side of its mouth while devaluing a woman's personhood to the point she's a literal trophy wife for whatever man can beat up other men hard enough to fight them off until she's marriage age. A society where two women loving each other isn't anything of note for the most part yet still has marriage as an institution representing a contract between a father and a groom meant to transfer ownership of a woman from one man to another.
To make it even more clear, these relationships are "commonplace" insofar as they conform to the heterosexual paradigm represented by the duels. Suletta is a woman, but it's still completely valid for her to be the Holder because (at least from the outside) she's willing to subjugate Miorine and force her into marriage just like a man. More female drone pilots doesn't make the US military any less of a murderous imperialist gang. More female Holder candidates doesn't make the duels any less of a system of patriarchal subjugation.
The existence of queerness in and of itself may be normalized, but only until it actually threatens the status quo. Everyone is willing to go along with Suletta as Holder until it allows Miorine the freedom to start making moves outside of the prescribed role set for her. Then the Jeturks start shipping in AI super robots and openly cheating in duels, Peil pulls out the Gundam, and Grassley steps in to block the formation of GUND-ARM and use Antidote. The lesbians are all cute and non-threatening until the girly nonsense they get up to actually starts to undermine the patriarchy and the capitalist economy it works to reinforce.
That last bit is kind of important, too. Guel's the most blindingly misogynistic of the three, but all of the boys see Miorine as an object in the end. Elan is of special note considering how many people hand wave his incel baby rage during the duel with Suletta, but it's also seen in how he barely recognizes Miorine as a human being. On another level, it's also just irrelevant how he treats her to begin with, as what he (Peil) is actually fighting for is the power represented by owning her, itself represented by how he's three different guys who all treat Miorine differently, yet they all still pose a threat to her autonomy.
To bring this all home, consider the character of Delling who represents the pinnacle of patriarchy and capitalism within the show. Presiding over the Group like he's the king and it's his feudal court who set up the entire Holder system because he sees protecting and loving his daughter as finding her a strong enough man to make her a kept woman. Officially, he has no objection to Suletta being a woman (that sort of thing is commonplace, don't you know?), but he was hoping to see her and Miorine fail from the beginning because of the disruption she represented. He even tries to subvert the rules he made himself when things don't go his way.
Crucially, he does start to come around after a point, provided Miorine works within the system of capitalism that he presides over. It's why he's eventually shot and taken out of the rest of the show, though; a symbolic weakening of both patriarchy and capitalism hearkening the change to the status quo that's about to come by the end of the series. It's why he's not part of the happy family at the end, too, relegated to court hearings as a vestige of the past that everyone else is moving on from. He's not gone just yet, but he's on borrowed time. It ultimately works to tell us that these oppressive institutions he represents that are still very much a part of Ad Stella by the credit roll likely won't be around much longer, either.
