..is now removed for a cheap virtue signal. R34 writers for jerkbait have more talent than studio writers today!

This is part of the mistake people keep making. This isn't a "cheap virtue signal" for them at all, it's deliberate malfeasance for subconscious subversion.

Instead of looking at it from "they changed fiction", look at it from how they view it: what feelings does this instill in the viewer?

You said yourself that the love story directly related to a couple in the story, and to help them cement their feelings toward one another.

By changing it to a homosexual relationship they are directly inferring that homosexuality is ancient, normal and destined (even though there is zero possibility for mammalians to continue the species this way).

Impressionable people will see this as "affirming their truth", or reinforcing their notions about accepting aberrant behaviour.

Isolated, it means very little. But if you step back and look at the big picture and how prevalent this messaging is in modern media -- as others in the thread note -- it's everywhere.

This aims to further normalise within viewers -- on a subconscious level -- that homosexuality is as "pure" and "ancient" as normal behaviour. And that there is a romanticised element to its normalisation just like normal couples.

People continue to misconstrue their malice for stupidity and laziness. But this is all very deliberate. And while its presence isn't subtle at all, how it is presented is what makes it so malevolent.