I can't believe we are still discussing gender roles in a fantasy game. Dudeguy is spamming every thread with his agenda and people are discussing an upcoming adventure RPG as if it is a dating sim.
The point of having companions of different races is to get a different insight into another culture. Especially if players only play human and elves, this is important for lore and storytelling. Lae'zel was interesting in that regard, because she gave us background about gith, which became important later. Given how important the Ironhand gnomes are, Barcus should have been a companion too.
This is what I mean: try to include the different races and factions in the companions, to get a full picture.
I don't play a romance game, I play an adventure that can include romance, but where romance shouldn't be the main focus. The romance and sex scenes in BG3 are minor compared to everything else.
Lae'zel is an excellent example as you say where her race has relevance to her character and the overall story, which makes it so interesting to have a gith companion.
As an example of the opposite for comparison, Astarion and Shadowheart are high-elves / half high-elf. But being a high elf has literally no relevance or impact on them as characters. They are only high elf because they are supposed to be pretty and elf is pretty. You can swap either of them to halfling and you wouldn't have to change a single line in their entire story. This is the pretty human with pointy ears stereotype, where the pointy ears are just there as decoration and it is entirely irrelevant that they are elves in every other regard.
