Risa

I have spend some time reading and have to agree with you. I do stand by some of my statements and am happy to provide examples:

Environmental Issus

I refer to “Sanctuary” (ST:D S3E08) here. The underlying message of the episode is, of course, pro environmental. My main issue is, that it is so very very not subtle about it. The obvious good guy of COURSE is an “empath” and OF COURSE everybody on the planet is oh so nice to animals, to a point of asking them kindly to leave again (powered by a magical space laser), instead of forcing them out. And OF COURSE they live in complete harmony with nature, because THEY ARE THE GOOD GUYS, CAN’T YOU SEE HOW F-ING GOOD THEY ARE.

It's tiering. It’s so so obvious who are the goodies and the badies. There is no grey here, nothing thought provoking. This is, in my opinion, pandering to the left crowd.

Which I am member of. I count myself as someone, who is very much interested in the whole topic of climate chance, systems collapse and environmental movement. It’s a topic that matters to me. Here it is not driven forward. The episode isn’t showing anything new; it’s not presenting any solutions; it’s not highlighting any problems. It doesn’t trust its audience with the ability to think for themselves. It’s like getting pre-chewed food. You don’t have to question anything, don’t have to conclude anything. It's just plane obvious how this should be viewed. The whole episode comes down to Environmentalism = Good Anti-Enviromentalism = Bad. And I agree. But this episode is using the pro Environmental stance of the characters to drive the point home how good and nice they are.
The episode would be the same if they landed on a planet where the bad guys are threatening to kill all puppies and the good guys are the only ones defending them. It’s lazy and it’s bad writing and it reduces a very important issue of our time (I’d go so far as to say the most important issue of our time) to a mere backdrop.

Let me compare that to, for example, the way how the Malon are presented in Voyager. Of course the mask appears to be the same, just from the other side (pollution = bad). But there are at least some nuances to this theme. I’ll not go into so much detail, but the fact that Voyager is literally offering them a solution to their problem (of pollution) and they turn it down because there is a whole industry around managing pollution at least is a critical take on our modern society, without patronizing the audience too much.

Queerness

The “forced” aspect I was thinking about, when I wrote my original comment, mainly comes from the way how Sevens and Rafis relationship is treated in ST:Picard.

To me it felt like there was no organic build up to it. It just popped up and then disappeared again. There was no real build up to it, in my opinion (!). This is what I mean when I say tucked on. It would make no difference if one of the two has a different sex. It would still feel of and weirdly out of character. It’s very much in line with how season one and two of ST:P treat their storylines, which are often oversimplified, dumbed down and often not explored to the extend they would have deserved. Rafis and Sevens relationship felt glued on and almost like an afterthought. That’s what I mean pandering to the left crowd. It’s not organic or natural, it’s just forced into there (and the only reason I can think of is to hold up a Neon sign about how woke they are).

ST:D handled, things way better, as I have learned after doing some reading up on the topic over the last couple of hours.

Homosexual, Trans- and Non-Binary characters are treated in a positive light, and, at least in the case of gay persons, normalized, as @Stamets has pointed out upthread. I’d wish for ST:D to take this one farer, as detailed below, but hey, it’s definitely the right direction to walk in. Plus, I now do indeed feel they treated Queer topics with respect (after reading about it some more).

It’s a shame how it is embedded in a shitshow of a story, but after reading some of the comments here and doing some more research I absolutely have to agree: They handled it fine. I do stand corrected in that regard and am happy to admit so.

My remaining problem with Non-Binarity, and how it is treated, is how it is still handled as something out of the ordinary. I would prefer ST to uphold it’s utopian take on things. In a utopian world Non-Binarity would be a non-issue. I think it would have been a much more revolutionary stance if ST:D showed people choosing /changing and modifying their pronouns regularly, without it being in the spotlight too much. Because, if one thought this to its end, that’s the kind of future society that has arrived beyond the dichotomy of binary genders.

Think about how being vegetarian is presented in ST:TNG. Humanity has simply moved on from it. There are a few remarks towards this here and there, but mainly it is treated as a given. I would have loved for ST:D to take a similar approach to Non-Binarity.