I guess Rick Berman was okay with homoerotic women stuff, just not men stuff?
F/F was weirdly more palatable to audiences for decades before M/M.
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.
Ricky B. Probably thought it was a Sappho situation. To be honest, Berman did the most damage to Star Trek while TNG was still on the air.
After that, he became the Kathleen Kennedy of Star Trek - still in power on paper, but amounting to much less as time went on.
DS9 was essentially run by Ira Steven Behr and Voyager by Jeri Taylor. Which is why they were so unusually sexually liberal and feminist, respectively, for something on network prime time in the 1990s.
Edit: Feminist, not feminine. Not really wrong, but a weird way to say it. :P
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.
There are some stories about the DS9 writers/runners being less Bermaned because his focus was on ending TNG and then starting Voy.
So uh… what was the gay episode?
It's been too long since I've last watched DS9, but skimming though the episode summaries, I'm guessing it's s4e5 "Rejoined"
A Trill scientist (Susanna Thompson), whose host once was married to Dax's previous host, arrives on Deep Space Nine; the former lovers must decide if they want to resume their relationship and defy the laws of Trill society.
