My interpretation on how this came about:

Writer 1: Let's do a homosexual propaganda episode!

Writer 2: How do we disguise it?

W1: We'll do it as a holodeck thing!

W2: Won't that be out of character for almost all of the cast?

W1: We'll do that sex virus thing from TNG. The episode where Data was fully functional.

W2: How will we make that work? It'll be forced for sure.

W1: It'll be a test thing. For the stunning and brave black female lead as a command thing or whatever.

W2: How are we going to have a conclusion that isn't a disaster?

W1: We'll play it off as that Kirk thing, Kobiashi Maru. The lose-lose situation where it's supposed to show your character.

W2: But Kirk beat that by cheating so if we don't have our stunning and brave black female win people will point out that a white male succeeded where a stunning and brave black female lost.

W1: If anyone points that out we'll just call them racist because it's current year!

And my biggest error in all of this is thinking they had a discussion at all instead of just going with an already written fan fiction posted somewhere on the Internet.