I'm having a hard time following the "poor Nintendo/game devs" thing. Yeah, every now and then stuff gets blown out of proportion, but at the same time, this did need to happen at some point and I'm happy they did it. At worst, this adds nothing to your experience. To a good number of people (gay or otherwise), I'm sure it's a very welcome addition and might change the game for them in a considerable way. Nobody loses, a lot of people win. Those are typically the moves you want to make, needless to say. Completely useless features get put into video games all the time, so I don't think it's asking too much to include something that a lot of people want and will find useful (when it makes sense).
You shouldn't have things like this for the sake of having them. You shouldn't shoehorn in any group of people (gay people, men, women, whatever) if it doesn't make sense for the game or if it's completely out of place. But if relationship building over which the user has control is a central theme in your game, yeah, options for gay relationships probably need to be in your game in some capacity. I'm glad Nintendo is learning the right lessons when it comes to things like this (assuming that they handle it appropriately in the game, which I'm pretty confident they will).